identity of mkinitrd; possible dependency problems with woody

[Cheryl Homiak <chomiak@chartermi.net>]

The instructions for 2.4 kernels say that mkinitrd should be upgraded;
debian has no package by that name; is this the same as mkinitrd-cd or is
it something different?
Thinking it might be the same as mkinitrd-cd, I tried to install it and
was told some packages could not install. There is apparently a conflict
involving packages pyton, python-dev vs. python-base. If you allow
python-dev and python to be installed, you still get "some packages could
not be installed" when you try to install mkinitrd-cd; you are told in
both cases that mkinitrd depends on boot-floppies but this isn't going to
be installed, and if you try to install boot-floppies, you are told that
other python-related packages are needed, depending on which ones you have
installed. But if you go back and let the given set of python packages be
installed, another python package you are supposed to need will be
removed; this conflict appears to go on between python-base vs. python-dev
and python. Is this a debian problem or have I misinstalled something?

Thanks.

Cheryl