Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
Finally, the
rootwait
parameter tells the kernel that it should not try to boot the system
any further until the device containing the root file system is available. Without this option,
the Pi can get stuck as it begins to boot before the relatively slow SD card is fully ready for
access.
With the exception of the
dwc_otg
setting, none of these kernel parameters are unique to
the Pi. The bootloader configuration of any Linux distribution will include a list of options
very similar to those of
cmdline.txt
.
Typically, you should leave the
cmdline.txt
file alone. It's created by the distribution
maintainers specifically for that version of Linux, and may differ from one distribution to
the next. Entries that work on Pidora may not work on Raspbian, and vice versa. The options
available to
cmdline.txt
depend on what kernel the distribution is using and what fea-
tures were included when the kernel was built.
If you're a kernel developer, you can use
cmdline.txt
to pass parameters for enabling or
disabling new functionality that you've compiled into the kernel. As with
config.txt
, any
changes require a reboot to take effect.
