Firstly, please note that this discussion is highly biased toward the x86[_64] architecture. For the typical x86 desktop or server kernel build procedure, this step is internally divided into two distinct parts:
- Generating the initramfs (formerly called initrd) image
- (GRUB) bootloader setup for the new kernel image
The reason it's encapsulated into a single step in this recipe for the kernel build process here is that, on the x86 architecture, convenience scripts perform both tasks, giving the appearance of a single step.
Wondering what exactly this initramfs (or initrd) image file is? Please see the following Understanding the initramfs framework section for details. We'll get there soon.
For now, let's just go ahead and generate the initramfs (short for initial ram filesystem) image file as well as update the bootloader. Performing this on x86[_64] Ubuntu is easily done in one simple...
