DH_INSTALLINITRAMFS(1)

💖 DH_INSTALLINITRAMFS — the debhelper glow-up for initramfs hooks 💖

okay bestie, so this is dh_installinitramfs, a page from the Debhelper manual (section 1, the "please actually run me" section). Buckle up, it's short but it eats. ✨

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🌸 NAME 🌸

dh_installinitramfs — install initramfs hooks and setup maintscripts 🎀

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🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

dh_installinitramfs [debhelper options] [-n]

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✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

so basically dh_installinitramfs is a debhelper program whose whole entire job, its main character purpose, is installing the initramfs hooks that Debian packages bring with them. 💅

and here's the tea: if dh_installinitramfs installs or even just detects one or more initramfs hooks chilling in the package, then it also automatically generates the noawait trigger update-initframfs command that you need to interface with the Debian initramfs system. that trigger? it gets inserted into the packaging by dh_installdeb(1). no cap. 🫶

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🎀 FILES 🎀

• debian/package.initramfs-hook — we assume this is an initramfs hook, and it gets installed into usr/share/initramfs-tools/hooks/package inside the package build directory. if you want the whole lore on what initramfs hooks even are, go read HOOK SCRIPTS in initramfs-tools(8). 📚

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🔥 OPTIONS 🔥

• -n, --no-scripts — do not add the update-initramfs trigger, even if it's giving very strong "this package might need it" energy. the option is called --no-scripts for historical reasons, because dh_installinitramfs used to generate maintainer scripts that called update-initramfs -u. ancient history fr fr. 👑

use this option if you need to interface with the update-initramfs system in a way the noawait trigger just isn't serving (e.g. because you genuinely need the extra guarantees — and, honestly, the extra head-aches 💀 — of an await trigger).

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🌈 NOTES 🌈

⚠️ okay this is important: this command is not idempotent. you need to call dh_prep(1) between invocations of this command. otherwise it may cause multiple instances of the same text to be added to the triggers file. and that's a mess nobody wants. 😭

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⭐ SEE ALSO ⭐

debhelper(7) update-initramfs(8) initramfs-tools(8)

this program is a part of debhelper. 💜

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👑 AUTHOR 👑

Niels Thykier <niels@thykier.net> — the icon who wrote this. 🫡

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and that's the whole page, bestie!! 🧚 version 14.5ubuntu1, dated 2026-09-21, and it lives in the Debhelper manual as DH_INSTALLINITRAMFS(1). slay, go install those hooks. 💅✨🍓