Problems swithcing _from_ initrd kernel

[stan <stanb@panix.com>]

Last night I tried to take a "unstable" system from the 2.4 series of
kernels to 2.6. Here's what I did.

I downloaded teh apropriate 2.6 kernel mage pacakge & installed it. During
this, I was prompted to change lilo,conf to use initrd. I did this, and the
machine rebooted OK, except for a few issues, tat told me I needed to build
a custom kernel (network driver did not automaicly laod, but could be
loaded with modprobe). So, I downloaded the 2.6 kernel source package, ran
make menuconfig, and built a non initrd kerenl with kernel-package. Then I
used dpkg to install this. 

When I rebooted the machine it was unable to mount the filesystems, I'm
using esierfs, and I had put that in the kernel build (not as a module).
The machine would not boot from kernel.OLD either.

I was able to boot it of a rescue disk, and remake all the right links etc
to go back to the kernel from the .deb. The I remade the custom kernel,
this time makeing it as a initrd image. This works.

But, I would prefer to not use initrd. Any idea why this failed?

-- 
"They that would give up essential liberty for temporary safety deserve
neither liberty nor safety."
						-- Benjamin Franklin