+The following shell script can create a prebuilt cpio archive you can
+use in place of the above config file:
+
+ #!/bin/sh
+
+ # Copyright 2006 Rob Landley <rob@landley.net> and TimeSys Corporation.
+ # Licensed under GPL version 2
+
+ if [ $# -ne 2 ]
+ then
+ echo "usage: mkinitramfs directory imagename.cpio.gz"
+ exit 1
+ fi
+
+ if [ -d "$1" ]
+ then
+ echo "creating $2 from $1"
+ (cd "$1"; find . | cpio -o -H newc | gzip) > "$2"
+ else
+ echo "First argument must be a directory"
+ exit 1
+ fi
+
+Note: The cpio man page contains some bad advice that will break your initramfs
+archive if you follow it. It says "A typical way to generate the list
+of filenames is with the find command; you should give find the -depth option
+to minimize problems with permissions on directories that are unwritable or not
+searchable." Don't do this when creating initramfs.cpio.gz images, it won't
+work. The Linux kernel cpio extractor won't create files in a directory that
+doesn't exist, so the directory entries must go before the files that go in
+those directories. The above script gets them in the right order.
+
+External initramfs images:
+--------------------------
+
+If the kernel has initrd support enabled, an external cpio.gz archive can also
+be passed into a 2.6 kernel in place of an initrd. In this case, the kernel
+will autodetect the type (initramfs, not initrd) and extract the external cpio
+archive into rootfs before trying to run /init.
+
+This has the memory efficiency advantages of initramfs (no ramdisk block
+device) but the separate packaging of initrd (which is nice if you have
+non-GPL code you'd like to run from initramfs, without conflating it with
+the GPL licensed Linux kernel binary).
+
+It can also be used to supplement the kernel's built-in initamfs image. The
+files in the external archive will overwrite any conflicting files in
+the built-in initramfs archive. Some distributors also prefer to customize
+a single kernel image with task-specific initramfs images, without recompiling.
+