Dracut

Dracut is an initramfs infrastructure and aims to have as little as possible hard-coded into the initramfs. It originated from the Fedora Project and was ported to Gentoo in the 2010 Google Summer of Code. For more detailed information, refer to the documentation at kernel.org.

Installation
Dracut works through its modules (not kernel modules). The modules take care of various common tasks during the boot process. By default, the optional modules are not installed. Installation of those can be controlled using the DRACUT_MODULES variable in /etc/make.conf.

Since Dracut is not yet stable in Portage, add it to the package keywords first.

Tasks
The tasks below are meant as use cases for Dracut. Although you can specify the kernel verion manually, by default it uses the currently active kernel. Boot options may depend on your particular setup; they may be provided as boot options, or (in case of netboot) as dhcp options. Check the manpage for more info:

NFS Boot
For an NFS boot, you need only 3 modules and the nfs dracut module.

Booting is done with the following line in your PXE config. The rd.ip=auto let's it auto detect the NFS settings through DHCP. The NFS boot path is provided to the client through the DHCP option "root-path" with the following value: :

NBD Boot
For an NBD boot, you need only 3 modules and the nbd dracut module.

Booting is done with the following line in your PXE config. The rd.ip=auto let's it auto detect the NBD settings through DHCP. The NBD boot path is provided to the client through the DHCP option "root-path" with the following value: nbd:::

Other Filesystems
Other filesystems than the ones that are available through the Dracut modules can be installed using the filesystems parameter. To include kernel modules, the kernel-modules Dracut module also has to be included. This module is installed by default.

Custom Modules
This stub paragraph refers to this description for now.