[Gllug] initrd images & building 2.6.x kernels

[Sarah Ewen]

Hi folks,

I've spent the weekend building 2.6.10+ kernels and have come to the
conclusion that I'm missing some basic knowledge about initial ramdisks.

I'm pretty sure I need an initrd img, particularly as I'm trying to
build the suspend2 patch on it, and need all my ide support as modules,
as far as I'm aware.

However, before I even get to booting kernels patched as above, I'm
having issues just trying to build plain and simple 2.6 kernels with
initrd imgs.

I build the kernel, put it & the matching System.map into /boot, and
then run mkinitrd -o /boot/initrd.img kernel-version and then edit
grub.conf to list the new kernel and it's initrd.img file.

But just about every kernel I've built has rendered me helpless with a
kernel panic: unable to mount root FS on unknown-block(0,0).

ext3 is built into the kernel, and my root partition is ext3.

I'm running Ubuntu Hoary *makes face at John*, and have managed to build one
2.6.13 kernel & ramdisk that boots ok, but it looks like I just fluked
it.

Any pointers? I notice when I make bzImage that the final output says
root device is 3,4 - can someone explain that, is it relevant (would
seem to be)?

I have to admit to having run out of patience atm, but even so I'd like
some insight into using mkinitrd so that I can sleep at night.

Any obvious gotchas for me? Happy to provide more info, everything I've
read on the topic isn't switching on the lightbulb for me.

Sarah & her chaotic /boot directory.
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