[gentoo-embedded] initramfs help

[John L. Poole]

I'm trying to create a initramfs for the Marvell OpenRD-client as Raúl 
Porcel did for the SheevaPlug in his acclaimed tome: 
http://dev.gentoo.org/~armin76/arm/sheevaplug/install.xml

I've created a topic "Help with initramfs for Marvell OpenRD-Client LE" 
in the forum, http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-6511131.html#6511131, 
outlining what I have done and the failure I have met with:

   tftpboot 0x8000000 initramfs
   ...
   ## Loading Ramdisk Image at 08000000 ...
   Bad Magic Number

My question that could be readily answered is:  when preparing the 
initramfs for a staged tree at /usr/src/initramfs, is the command

   cd /usr/src/initramfs/
   find . -print0 | cpio --null -ov --format=newc | gzip -9 > [outputfile]

I'm wondering if the file should be in gzip format or something else?

Also, I read at the deprecated http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/genkernel.xml
that:

   Additionally, you should enable SquashFS because most modern Gentoo 
Installation CDs require it.

Does this apply to a kernel for the ARM processor such as Raul did?

It would be really educational to learn what the steps are for creating 
an initramfs.

--

John Laurence Poole
P.O. Box 6566
Napa CA 94581-6566
707-812-1323 office

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