Root: mkinitrd ... Permission denied. (?)

[Adam Felix Bogacki]

Hi, at the risk of being tiresome (to myself if no one else) ... I 
apt-graded to kernel-image-2.6.5-1-686 successfully, but after the next 
dist-upgrade - which 'upgraded' the kernel-image - I found reboot gave 
me kernel panic

"VFS: Cannot open root device "hdb5" or unknown-block (0,0)
Please append a correct "root= " boot option
Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown block (0,0)"

Googling around suggested that 2.6.5 has changed the parsing of the 
"root= " boot  argument.

I rebooted with the rescue disk (2.4.8-bf2.4), which is missing its 
modules dependency file (modules.dep), but now find

"Tux:~# /usr/sbin/mkinitrd -m /boot/initrd.img-2.6.5-1-686 -o 2.6.5custom
/usr/sbin/mkinitrd line 1: /boot/initrd.img-2.6.5-1-686: Permission denied"

Am I missing something here - or a bug ?

Adam Bogacki,
address@hidden