Woody, 2.4 Kernels, Ramdisks and ReiserFS

[Jim Farrand <jim@farrand.net>]

Hi,

I just upgraded from Potato to Woody, and installed Kernel 2.4.  (Using
only a 28.8k internet connection that drops after 2 hours.  It's a
tribute to the greatness of apt that this was still a relatively
painless process!)

I have a few queries.  What exactly is the purpose of the initial
ramdisk image which I need to boot?  I have my suspicions, but I'm not
really sure.  It's obviously important, because my system won't boot
without it.  Interestingly, when I installed kernel-image-2.4.3, it
reconfigured lilo but didn't put the initrd in the lilo config file.  Is
this a bug or did I do something wrong?

Is the initial ramdisk there so that the kernel can load modules before
it has mounted the root partition?

If so, does this mean I can put my root partition on a ReiserFS
partition, even though ReiserFS is (in the default kernel-image package)
compiled as a module?

If not, do I need to compile a kernel with ReiserFS built in?  If so,
what changes (if any) to I have to make to the initial ramdisk, and how
to I go about making them?

Thanks in advance,
Jim