No sda1 in /dev
 

My custom kernel wont boot and i think i know why. there is no sda1 etc in /dev. how do i create them?

You can use the makedev and mknod tools. The kernel source directory also has a file named devices.txt somewhere with some relevant info.

See http://www.lanana.org/docs/device-list/devices.txt for a list of linux allocated devices (content is from 2005, so it's not very up-to-date).