@Dave: Ack, I understand the same as you do so far. The initramfs is the output of building the "debian-installer" packages, and it allows setting in which format you want that file; I've put "initramfs" explicitly and checked the code which does call cpio -H newc back then, so I confirm that it's created correctly.
I've submitted a patch to add CONFIG_CRAMFS=y to make use of the fallback you mention (initrd in ramdisk block device) while we figure out what's wrong with initramfs.
I agree with you it's either a kernel or qemu bug, but given that I saw initramfs unpacking work on real imx51 boards' dmesgs (in other bug reports), I tend to believe it's a qemu issue, but I don't know enought of the format to look into it.
@Dave: Ack, I understand the same as you do so far. The initramfs is the output of building the "debian-installer" packages, and it allows setting in which format you want that file; I've put "initramfs" explicitly and checked the code which does call cpio -H newc back then, so I confirm that it's created correctly.
I've submitted a patch to add CONFIG_CRAMFS=y to make use of the fallback you mention (initrd in ramdisk block device) while we figure out what's wrong with initramfs.
I agree with you it's either a kernel or qemu bug, but given that I saw initramfs unpacking work on real imx51 boards' dmesgs (in other bug reports), I tend to believe it's a qemu issue, but I don't know enought of the format to look into it.
Thanks,