initrd udev/devfs problem

[sergei@cs.utk.edu]

Hello,

I've recently been stomped by a very strange kernel problem and
I'm hoping someone here can help me out. I'm using a custom
kernel (2.6.20) that I've compiled myself, I've used mkinitrd to
generate an initrd. When my machine boots up it loads the initrd,
prints out a few errors from mount about devfs not being a known
file system then fails on pivot_root and kernal panics. I know
devfs has been depricated some time ago, the last kernel version
to have any support for it was 2.6.17.14 (which boots up on my
machine without any issues). The problem is it seems initrd is
somehow dependant on devfs support. As far as I can tell, what
happends is that when initrd get loaded it tries to mount /dev
using devfs when that fails it can't pivot_root as /dev doesn't
exist and it kernel panics. I've looked over mkinitrd.conf but
didn't see anything related to devfs or udev. Has anyone seen
anything like this before? I'd greatly appreceate any advice.

-Sergei