Dracut (software)


Dracut is a set of tools that provide enhanced functionality for automating the Linux boot process. The tool named is used to create a Linux boot image by copying tools and files from an installed system and combining it with the Dracut framework.
The initramfs has essentially one purpose: locating and mounting the real root file system so that the boot process can transition to it. This functionality is dependent on device availability. Therefore, instead of having hard-coded scripts to determine device availability and suitability, Dracut's initramfs depends on the Linux device manager to create symbolic links to device nodes. When the root file system's device node appears, Dracut mounts it as the new root file system. This helps to minimize the time required in initramfs such that, for example, 5-second boots are possible.
Most of the initramfs generation functionality in Dracut is provided by generator modules that are sourced by the main tool to install specific functionality into the initramfs. They live in the modules subdirectory, and use functionality provided by dracut-functions to do their work.
WWW dracut-ng.github.io/dracu...

Features

Dracut supports booting from direct attached storage
Dracut supports booting from network storage
Dracut supports the following architectures
Dracut can use the following shells
Dracut supports the following init systems
Dracut can be used for live media generation. It has flags for squashfs, and other things like overlay file system.

History

Dracut originated from Fedora Linux sponsored initially by Red Hat in . Dracut is named after the town of Dracut, similar to Wayland and Weston. This follows the tradition of Red Hat naming projects after places near the headquarters of Red Hat in Westford, Massachusetts.
In 2013, the development moved to GitHub from Kernel.org, while a was maintained till 2022.
As of Oct 2021, after the long time lead developer Harald Hoyer Red Hat it is a open source project.
In, the project was moved to a new code repository by the core team after the project leader had not been heard from for several months.
In Feb 2025, Ubuntu announced a to switch the default initramfs infrastructure from initramfs-tools to dracut.

Adoption

Distributions that depend on the dracut project for initramfs generation. The list is sorted by the date when dracut became the dependency for generating initramfs by default for a given distribution.
Most distributions have made the available to allow replacing the distribution's default initramfs generator. Significant list of these distributions:

Applications

Notable projects using dracut exclusively for initramfs generation
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