How do I make a custom netboot initrd with support for my hardware?

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelCustomBuild goes through the pitfalls and how-tos of compiling your own kernel the "ubuntu way" :)

Hope that helps. Please close the message if it does, thanks.

It does help but not all the way. It doesn't give any hints on initrd for netboot, wich might require non default mkinitrd stuff.

I am also attempting to achieve the same addition of network adapter support to the dapper netboot initrd.gz.

We want to install Ubuntu onto the IBM x3550 which requires the bnx2 drivers. These drivers are neither available in the 6.06 LTS or 6.10 netboot images. The kernel used for these netboot images are:

- for 6.06 LTS is the 2.6.15-13-386 kernel and
- for 6.10 is the 2.6.17-10-386 kernel.

Hence, I am looking for a way of including the bnx2 kernel module in the netboot initrd.gz. I would expect that this module would either:

- be built already and available through some other package which I have not yet found

or

- possible to build using the 2.6.15 kernel source using a specific kernel configuration file which I also have not yet found.

I would dearly appreciate any direction on this matter.

Many thanks in advance to whomever can shine light on this.