initrd in Debian kernel-image

[Gavin Hamill <gdh@acentral.co.uk>]

Hullo.

I've often wondered this but never been able to find a solution.. so here we 
go...

I'm using a custom Debianised kernel on a Dell poweredge 1600SC with the AMI 
megaraid module compiled into the kernel. Also, the kernel has no module 
support 

It's still running 2.4.21 and disk performance is poor. I've been advised to 
upgrade to a newer kernel to take advantage of the much better megaraid 
modules in more recent kernels, and I was thinking of just using one of the 
precompiled kernels from www.backports.org.

My question is... how does dpkg know that I need to load the megaraid module 
in the initrd so the system can mount / for init to boot the machine? I've 
looked in /etc/mkinitrd and seen the 'modules' file - should I just stick 
'megaraid' in there just in case? Would this cause any harm if it's already 
been included?

The last thing I want is to reboot a machine at a data centre for it to show 
"Panic - unable to mount rootfs" and have to involve the 'remote hands' at 
the data centre...

Cheers,
Gavin.