[ARMedslack] A few questions on kirkwood initrd

[Tyler T]

I've been enjoying Armedslack on my Sheeva for a while so I've decided
to put it on my Seagate Dockstar (a stripped down Sheeva) too. This
presents a few challenges that I think I can overcome with a little
help:

DockStar's u-Boot  is crippled, so I use it to chainload a better
u-Boot which I have flashed to mtd3. Even the mtd3 u-Boot can't boot
an initrd, though, which brings me to my dilemma: I would like to use
the u-Boot mkimage utility to meld the Slackware kernel and installer
initrd into a single file so my mtd3 u-Boot can boot it from a USB
stick. However, I need to alter the installer initrd first (to
automatically run dhcpcd and dropbear, as the Dockstar has no serial
console). I've tried to extract the initrd with gunzip and cpio; no
luck. What format is the Armedslack installer initrd in, and how do I
extract it?

Once I can do this, I believe I can repackage it with mkinitrd and go
from there.

Thanks in advance for any tips and info...
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 /yler