Re: Sarge AMD64 installation won't boot

[cmetzler@speakeasy.net]

Robert Isaac wrote:
> 
>> Upgrading past 2.6.12 requires getting yaird or initramfstools installed
>> on sarge somehow.  It can be done however.  Yaird is not too hard to
>> backport.
> 
> You could even save yourself some effort and install Yaird from backports.org :)


OK, I have a dumbass question:  why is yaird necessary at all?  Or more
accurately, why is an initrd necessary at all?  Is it something about
2.6.x kernels?  Back when I built 2.4.x kernels for my Athlon XP machine,
I follwed the script of

http://newbiedoc.sourceforge.net/system/kernel-pkg.html

and I never messed with an initrd.  My understanding is that the purpose
of an initrd is to provide an image of a RAMdisk containing the modules
the kernel needs to access the root file system; but if the hardware and
filesystem support needed is compiled into the kernel, why even bother
with an initrd?

-c