A few weeks ago I noticed that I had a new directory: /initrd. And since I have been digging around my initrd images, I now know why it's there. I have two qualms regarding this setup. It's under the root directory, and the linuxrc script does not check for its existence and create it if absent.

I really do not like having yet another directory in the root of my file system, and this directory is particularly noxious because it is empty by the time the system has finished starting. To most users /initrd looks like an empty and useless directory, which some users might unwittingly delete (I did). Also the FHS doesn't include such a directory.

Ideally, I'd like to see /initrd moved somewhere else. /tmp/initrd would be good, since the tempfs would mount over /tmp and /tmp/initrd would disappear. Someplace in the /var hierarchy would be fine: /var/initrd or /var/tmp/initrd. Even the /mnt directory would be good. It might also be nice to include a small text file in the directory to tell users why this directory is present and not delete it.

Finally, I'd like to know why the linuxrc script does not check to the existence of /initrd before it calls pivot_root, this will definitely keep your system from starting. If the root fs is still mounted read-only, then you can not create the directory that you want, but something more graceful should be done.