My nightmare continues...
generic 2.4.18?? <cough> <cough> Generic 2.4.18 has a ton of bits missing for the alpha architecture. When we did the HP updated kernel 2.4.18 for RH-7.2 on alpha we added 27 patches to fix various bugs. If you are going to use a generic kernel, I would like to suggest that you try 2.4.21 which has most of the previously mentioned patches
Okay, so I downloaded the 2.4.21 kernel source from kernel.org. I upgrade gcc to build it. I make the initrd image with mkinitrd. The kernel won't mount it and panics. I read the net for a while, finding that mkinitrd makes a cramfs image, but debian kernels are patched to allow initrd and the generic kernel source is not. Herbert is quoted as saying you can just use another fs with mkinitrd.conf, but how to do this isn't documented anywhere. I come across random references to genromfs, so I install this and use it. Now the initrd is found but the kernel panics with "cramfs: wrong magic" which is hilarious given that I'm not using cramfs anymore. I search in vain for the "official" debian patch for cramfs/initrd, but it doesn't seem to be anywhere I can find, at least for 2.4.20. I settle for a patch for init/do_mounts.c (which doesn't even exist in 2.4.18) that enables cramfs initrd images. I reboot. It sees the image and then panics with "cramfs: wrong magic".
I can mount both the romfs and the cramfs initrd.imgs and look around them when I'm booted with 2.4.18. I saw some reference to some kernel versions not being able to run mkinitrd correctly (why the heck the kernel would have anything to do with this is beyond me), but they all referred to kernels before 2.4.18. I don't understand what I have to do here to get the damn initrd image to load, whether romfs or cramfs. It never even gets to the /linuxrc since it doesn't mount properly, so I can't get a boot shell and look around. I also don't understand why the romfs image dies with a "cramfsf: wrong magic". This is incredibly frustrating.
Any more ideas? Thanks, Chris