2.6.17.13 initrd fiasco

[Net Llama!]

I built 2.6.17.13 today on a system that had been running 2.6.16.18 for 
the past 100+ days.  I used the same kernel config to build 2.6.17.13 as I 
had used for 2.6.16.18.  I built it with "make oldconfig && make all && 
make modules_install && make install".  All attempts to boot the 2.6.17.13 
kernel kept failing with a kernel panic when attempting to mount the / 
filesystem complaining that "could not mount /dev/root".

Since I have no clue what /dev/root was, I googled a bit, and determined 
that its part of the initrd.  I have an initrd for 2.6.17.13 just as I have one for 
2.6.16.18.  I like to build my kernels with support for the / filesystem, 
so in reality, I didn't really need an initrd (no SCSI disks here).  I 
commented out the initrd entry  (which was valid) in lilo.conf (yes, this 
is my last box using LILO, i've been converted to grub everywhere else, 
old habits die hard), ran /sbin/lilo, and rebooted to 2.6.17.13.  Guess 
what?!  It boots fine without the initrd.  I'm quite stumped on what is 
going on here.  I'm glad that it boots now, but i don't get how the initrd 
can be busticated like this when the kernel build process created it. 
Anyone?

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Lonni J Friedman                        netllama at linux-sxs.org
LlamaLand				http://netllama.linux-sxs.org