mkinitrd 3.5.7 kernel 2.6.17-gentoo-r4 mknod GNU 5.94 When creating Gentoo on a raid (md) root device, mknod appears to want to create the "/dev/md?" files as soft links pointing to the "real" nodes at "/dev/md/?". However, mkinitrd copies the "/dev/md?" nodes to the initrd volume as softlinks, causing a kernel panic at boot time since there is no real device on the volume. Using "cp -aL" instead of "cp -a" in mkinitrd for the device copying seems to resolve this issue.
same problem in sys-apps/mkinitrd-4.2.0.3 and in newer RH release - 4.2.1.10.
gone