Bug#259479: Bug report - dpkg/make-kpkg

[Bob Keyes <bob@xa.net>]

Package: dpkg 1.10.22
and/or
kernel-package 8.09l

Problem: kernel package portability issues, and initrd issues.

I have compiled a kernel on a 'testing' version, and want to unpack it on
another system which has 'testing in the apt/sources.list, but has
different versions on initrd-tools. The source system is using 0.1.70
initrd-tools, the dest is using 0.1.32woods.3. I'd like to know how to
have compatibility across versions, but this is a bug report, not a help
request. The bug is when I try to solve this by no specifying --initrd in
the make-kpkg line, I get the same error message. There should be no
attempt at an initial ramdisk in this situation; one of these packages has
an error.