This is the layout of a "Packlet", '+' symbols indicate concatenation and are not actual characters found in these positions within a packlet. Newlines are, however, found in packlets (though they are optional): INITRD+KERNEL+ APPEND+ |||SENTINEL|||+ INITRDSIZE+ |||SENTINEL|||+ KERNELSIZE+ |||EOF||| A packlet may be built as follows: cat initrd.gz vmlinuz > packlet echo "load_ramdisk=1 prompt_ramdisk=0 ramdisk_size=26215 rw root=/dev/ram kbd-reset" >> packlet echo "|||SENTINEL|||" >> packlet ls -la /initrd.gz | awk '{ print $5 }' | head -n1 >> packlet echo "|||SENTINEL|||" >> packlet ls -la /vmlinuz | awk '{ print $5 }' | head -n1 >> packlet echo "|||EOF|||" >> packlet