I'm seeing this too on my PowerMac 9500, even with 2.6.18-rc7 from <http://kernel-archive.buildserver.net/debian-kernel/>.
The kernel somehow loses the information where the initrd image is placed in memory. The correct data is there in arch/powerpc/kernel/prom_init.c:prom_check_initrd(), but in init/initramfs.c:populate_rootfs() it's wrong, initrd_{start,end} are both 0. So this definitely looks like a kernel problem. I'll continue to investigate. Cheers, Christian Aichinger PS: Please CC me, I'm not subscribed to d-kernel.
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