newworld g3 trying to get to 2.6.x; problems w/ udev

[Seth Daniel <powerpc@sethdaniel.org>]

Hello,

I have a Blue & White Newworld G3.  I use it as a firewall and it works
very well.  Currently it is running the 2.4.27-powerpc kernel.  I am
trying (and failing) to upgrade to 2.6.x (primarily 2.6.16-1-powerpc).  

Whenever I boot with a >= 2.6.8 kernel udev will hang at "Waiting for
/dev to be fully populated" and nothing will happen after that point
(I've waited up to 5 minutes for something to happen).  It doesn't
appear to be a hard lock.  The keyboard is still responsive but nothing
ever happens after the above message is printed.  The above message is
located in /etc/init.d/udev so it would appear to be a udev related
problem.

I am wondering a) how/if I can get 2.6.16 working on this machine and b)
if this problem has anything to do with how the initrd image is being
built?  The preinst script for 2.6.16-1-powerpc won't let yaird run if
the preinst script is being run on a kernel < 2.6.8 so I installed
initramfs-tools and the preinst script doesn't seem to mind that.  I
mention this because I have seen a number of threads on this list that
talk about problems with initrd images, particularly when the process
creating the image is on a 2.4 machine and is trying to create an image
for a 2.6 kernel.  None of those problems appear to be my problem.

Thanks for any help.

-- 
seth / @sethdaniel.org