MKELFIMAGE(8)

💖 MKELFIMAGE(8) 💖

okay bestie, welcome to the mkelfImage page from your friendly neighborhood System Manager's Manual — she's a little vintage, a little chaotic, but she's everything when you're booting Linux over a network. grab a strawberry 🍓 and let's get into it.

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✨ NAME ✨

mkelfImage — make an elf network bootable image for linux

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🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

mkelfImage [--command-line=command line] [--kernel=path to vmlinux]
[--ramdisk=path to ramdisk] [--output=file] [--ramdisk-base=<start addr>]

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so basically, mkelfImage is that girl 💅 — she builds an elf boot image out of your linux kernel images. and the way that this image is so versatile? it should work with any i386 multiboot compliant boot loader, an ELF bootloader that passes no options, a loader that's compliant with the linuxBIOS elf booting spec, or with the linux kexec kernel patch. lowkey iconic range.

and the key feature here — the main character moment, fr fr — is that nothing relies upon BIOS calls, but they are made when necessary. so if you're running linuxbios systems, this is exactly the vibe you need. periodt. 👑

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💀 BUGS 💀

ngl, there's some stuff you gotta know before you go off:

• not all kernel parameters can be passed with the multiboot image format. like, some of them simply do not make it through. 😭
• ip configuration is not automatically passed to a node.
• the ramdisk base is hard coded to 8MB by default. hard coded. no cap.
• and this man page need to be updated. bestie, she's aware. 🙈

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🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

go peek at these when you're done here:

• the kexec kernel patch
• LinuxBIOS
• Etherboot
• the multiboot standard

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👑 COPYRIGHT 👑

mkelfImage is under the GNU Public License version 2 🫶

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🌸 AUTHOR 🌸

Eric Biederman <ebiederman@lnxi.com> — thank you for your service, king 🫡✨

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and that's the whole page, bestie!! now go make some elf boot images and slay 💅🦋🌸

this cutie came to you from the 3rd Berkeley Distribution, version RELEASE_DATE — mwah 💖