[CentOS] building a new kernel, problems booting without initrd

Hello all,

Grabbed a new kernel (from kernel.org) to build a custom kernel but it won't boot. I followed the directions at redhat to setup a box without initrd (which I don't want and don't need to use). But the system hangs. Has anyone built a custom kernel without using initrd? I'm using CentOS 4.2. It hangs at or after "Freeing unused memory"

Thanks.

excerpt from the page: (http://fedora.redhat.com/docs/udev/)

Udev without initrd

Install Fedore Core as usual and reboot. Execute the following commands

mkdir /tmp/dev mount --move /dev /tmp/dev sbin/MAKEDEV null console zero mount --move /tmp/dev /dev

Install your kernel without an initrd. Reboot.

You will get some SELinux errors, and syslogd will not work as expected.