I'm trying to make my own live cd based on Debian etch. I won't bother to get into the details of how I am accomplishing this. My question has to do with the linuxrc script. According to the man page for initrd, that script is supposed to be executed if it exists. Then, after it has finished the real file system gets mounted. My problem is that my linuxrc script never gets executed. The system just boots as per usual. I know that my initrd works because if I call my script init then it does get executed. The only problem with this is that if I try to exit the busybox shell I get a kernel panic about trying to kill init. What is a way around this? Why is the linuxrc script never exectued? (I have made sure that the execute bit is set.) Any help would be appreciated.

maybe you find some Information here:

http://linuxwiki.de/LinuxRc

What are you using to boot the live disc, isolinux, grub etc?.. Could you include the lines on the config file that you are using to boot the live disc, it may not be pointing to the right location of the linuxrc file.

Thanks for your suggestions. As it turns out I was actually using an initramfs because of the way I was formatting the file. For an initrd all you need to do is use gzip. But with an initramfs you must create a cpio archive then gzip it. I was using the initramfs method because that's the way the initrd.img-2.6.18-5-686 file that's in /boot of my Debian install is formatted. I have learnt that this file is actually an initramfs file and not a true initrd. Now that I am using an actual initrd the linuxrc script is being executed.

Good to hear that you have it working now.