problems with custom kernel: no init?

[Sam Quigley <sq@emerose.com>]

Hi,

I'm making the transition back to Debian after a few years using Gentoo, and I'm
having a problem getting my custom-built kernel to boot.  Basically, the problem
is that with my custom kernels (2.6.13.4 and 2.6.13-ck8), everything goes fine
until the point where init is supposed to take over -- at that point, nothing
happens.  No error message, no panic, no nothing.  The last few things displayed
onscreen are some messages about my mouse being recognized, and that /selinux/
wasn't found -- which are the same as the messages I get when booting
(successfully) with a Debian stock kernel.

The kernel config I'm using is essentially identical to the one I used with
Gentoo, so it shouldn't be a hardware/kernel mismatch.  I've used make-kpkg with
and without the --initrd option to no avail.  I don't get it; does anyone have
any idea what's going wrong?

I should point out that I do *not* get the kernel panic about not finding the
root fs ("couldn't find VFS" or whatever) that one gets when one misleads the
kernel about where the rootfs is.  I also have the fs driver for my rootfs
(ext3) built-in to the kernel; it's not a module.  It's an IDE drive, and I do
have the IDE drivers built into the kernel.  The kernel really ought to be able
to find the root fs -- and, on Gentoo, it does.  

Briefly, this is an amd64 system using a pristine debian-unstable install,
up-to-date as of today.  the sysvinit package is version 2.86.ds1-4, and I can
boot the 2.6.12-1-amd64-k8 Debian kernel with no problems, but kernels built
(using kernel-package 9.008.1 and gcc 4:4.0.2-1) using either kernel.org's
2.6.13.4 or ck's 2.6.13-ck8 source trees don't work.  My grub version is
0.95+cvs20040624-17

I've put pretty much all the potentially-relevant details I could think of up
here: http://www.emerose.com/uncategorized/debian-help/

Anyway, please help me if you can.  Gentoo's great for things like rolling your
own kernels, but I don't want to go back to the never-ending "emerge world" if I
don't have to...

Thanks!
-sq