Kernel RPM questions

[Casey Price]

Hi Everyone,
    I just got my new 2.6.0 kernel config up and tested it out and it
seems to run great. I was wondering a little bit about creating a
binary rpm for my kernel. I know about the make rpm command, so I'm
thinking I could use make oldconfig/menuconfig/textconfig/xconfig/whatever
to get my .config, then I run make rpm, which I have tried and it
generates a debug rpm, source rpm and binary rpm. I'm just curious if I'm
doing this right and if there is something I'm skipping. I tried
installing the binary rpm, and it looked it did everything right, except I
noticed that in /boot it didn't generate the initrd image, is there
something special you need to do to do that and BTW, what exactly does the
initrd image do, tell the kernel what to initialize on startup? I also
noticed that the development rpm of the fews kernels:
kernel-2.6.0-1.23.i686.rpm and the i586 version are both about 15MB in
size, whereas my kernel was only about 4MB, any ideas? I also have been
working on creating a machine from source, so while in Fedora I have
created a separate partition and got most of the neccessary stuff on that,
however when I boot up using the lilo config:
boot=/dev/hda
map=/boot/map
vga=normal
default="Windows"
keytable=/boot/us.klt
prompt
nowarn
timeout=100
message=/boot/message
menu-scheme=wb:bw:wb:bw
image=/boot/vmlinuz
        label="Mandrake"
        root=/dev/hda7
        initrd=/boot/initrd.img
        append="devfs=mount acpi=ht resume=/dev/hda3 splash=silent"
        vga=788
        read-only
other=/dev/hda1
        label="Windows"
        table=/dev/hda
image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.0
        label="Fedora-2.6.0"
        root=/dev/hda2
        initrd=/boot/initrd-2.6.0.img
        append="rhgb"
image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.22-1.2135.nptl
        label="Fedora"
        root=/dev/hda2
        initrd=/boot/initrd-2.4.22-1.2135.nptl.img
        append="rhgb"
image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.0-1apx
        label="Apex"
        root=/dev/hda5
The kernel files reside on the mandrake /boot partition, since that is the
OS I installed last, and that is where lilo is looking for the images. So
that all works fine and dandy, but when I boot up the one named Apex it
goes through the kernel start up and then gives me:
Warning: Unable to open an inital console
Kernel panic: no init found. Try passing init= to the kernel.
Except on /hda5 partition, I do have a /sbin/init, could the problem be
that when I built it I told it to install the sysVinit to /mnt/apex/ as a
prefix...since I was using Fedora at the time I was compiling the
utilities?

Thanks,

-- 
Casey Price