Using Booster alongside mkinitfs ================================ Booster is an initramfs tool which can be used as an alternative to Alpine's default mkinitfs. The Alpine Booster package will automatically generate /boot/booster-$flavor analog to the /boot/initramfs-$flavor image generated by mkinitfs. When using extlinux, a bootloader entry for the generated Booster ramdisk image can be configured in /etc/update-extlinux.d/, e.g.: $ cat /etc/update-extlinux.d/booster LABEL booster MENU LABEL Linux lts (booster) LINUX vmlinuz-lts INITRD booster-lts APPEND root=/dev/sda3 rootfstype=ext4 quiet Additionally, Booster may need additional configuration depending on your setup. Refer to the booster manual page for more information. In both cases, after modifying the corresponding configuration files the package triggers (for booster and/or syslinux) need to be re-run, e.g. via apk fix. Replacing mkinitfs with Booster =============================== The Booster package also provides the initramfs-generator provider. For this reason, mkinitfs can be replaced entirely with Booster. For this purpose, simply install Booster and remove mkinitfs. Afterwards, adjust /etc/update-extlinux.conf (or your appropriate bootloader configuration file) accordingly. Keep in mind that many existing tools (e.g. update-extlinux) require /boot/initramfs-$flavor to be present while Booster only creates /boot/booster-$flavor. For this reason, it is highly recommended to create an appropriate symlink as follows when removing mkinitfs entirely: # ln -s /boot/booster-$flavor /boot/initramfs-$flavor