update-initramfs produces unusable initrd.img

[Peter Tenenbaum]

In my recent experiments with moving my home Debian desktop to RAID-1 arrays, I discovered that update-initramfs is producing intrd.img-* files which are unusable.  What I mean by that is this:

When I do update-initramfs -u (or -c), it produces a new initrd.img-2.6.32-5-amd64.  When I attempt to boot with the new file, I get the following:

Loading, please wait [long wait, and then:]
Gave up waiting for root device
...[some suggestions about looking at /proc/cmdline and /proc/modules]
Alert:  /dev/md3 does not exist!  Dropping to a shell!

[etc]

Note that /dev/md3 is the RAID-1 array which is mounted as / . 

When I replace the initrd.img-2.6.32-5-amd64 which was generated when I installed squeeze, the computer boots without any problems, informs me that /dev/md3 has been started with 2 drives, etc.

My /etc/initramfs-tools/initramfs.conf has MODULES=most, my /etc/initramfs-tools/modules has nothing enabled, and /etc/initramfs-tools/update-initramfs.conf has update-initramfs=yes and backup-initramfs=no.  My suspicion is that I need to add some modules to the modules file.  Is this correct?  If so, which ones do I need for a system running software RAID-1 configured with mdadm?

Thanks in advance,
-PT

[Peter Tenenbaum]

Hi again --

Does anyone have any post-thanksgiving suggestions for how to handle this issue? 

Thanks in advance,
-PT