LinuxQuestions.org - apt-get kernel-image failure?

i'm trying to install a new kernel having made my system unbootable by mucking up all my kernel and lilo configs but I get a load of errors from apt-get starting with a failure to set up initrd when installing the new kernel. I'm booted off a knoppix disk and chrooting to the drive if that has any significance

Code:

Knoppix:/boot# apt-get install kernel-image-2.6.8-1-686

Reading Package Lists... Done

Building Dependency Tree... Done

kernel-image-2.6.8-1-686 is already the newest version.

0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 1039 not upgraded.

1 not fully installed or removed.

Need to get 0B of archives.

After unpacking 0B of additional disk space will be used.

Setting up kernel-image-2.6.8-1-686 (2.6.8-4) ...

/usr/sbin/mkinitrd: /dev/fd does not exist

Failed to create initrd image.

dpkg: error processing kernel-image-2.6.8-1-686 (--configure):

 subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 9

Errors were encountered while processing:

 kernel-image-2.6.8-1-686

E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

anyone got any idea why this might happen?