custom kernel without initrd and with udev

[Mike McClain <mike.junk@nethere.com>]

Howdy,

    While surely no expert I've been building my own kernels for
a long time with little trouble but with a recent install of 
'Squeeze' I'm stumped. I've built, reconfigured, built again for
several days now. No joy. I've spent hours Googling for any and 
everybody's thoughts on the error: 'Kernel panic - not syncing: 
VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(0,0)' with little luck.

    Some one did suggest I decompile the initrd that shipped with
the install. On doing that I discovered that the device files for
the harddrive are created before the drive is mounted. Booting an
'Etch' partition I see that Squeeze's /dev/ is all but empty when 
Squeeze is not running which may have something to do with the 
failure to mount the root partition. 

    Is anyone running a custom kernel without an initrd with udev?
Any tips, pointers will be appreciated.

Thanks,
Mike
-- 
Satisfied user of Linux since 1997.
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