empty initrd.img-2.6.8-1-386.new

[Haines Brown]

I apologize if this is a duplicate message. My first copy never showed
up. 

----

My previous working grub stanza was:

  title Debian sarge 2.6.8-1-386
    root (hd2,0)
    kernel /vmlinuz ro root=/dev/sdc1 apm=off 
    initrd /initrd.img 

  (pointing to symlink initrd.img@ -> /boot/initrd.img-2.6.8-1-386)

I did an automatic upgrade of all packages, which may have included an
upgrade of my initrd.img. The upgrade came with an alert that my
bootloader requires that I add initrd=/initrd.img to the
images=/vmlinuz stanza. 

I did not understand this for two reasons. I assume that the "initrd
/initrd.img" command has the same effect as the "initrd=/initrd.img"
kernel option. Also, I thought the word "stanza" refers to the whole
section in grub starting with the title command, not a single
line. Not making sense of it, I ignored the alert.

However, I found that the upgrade replaced my
"/boot/initrd.img-2.6.8-1-386" file with a file named
"/boot/initrd.img-2.6.8-1-386.new". Is this a 
legitimate name?

More importantly, this new file has zero-length. Naturally it results
in a kernel panic:  

  Cannot open root device 'sdc1' or unknown-block(0,0)
  Please append a correct "root=" boot option
  Kernel panic: VF8: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(0,0)

Someone else just reported a similar problem, and I wonder if a brand
new initrd.img-2.6.8-1-389 package is broken (but this other person
uses kernel 2.6.9). 

Haines Brown