Boot hangs at Extracting /ram1.cpio.gz

Whilst testing bootcd with a vanilla kernel 2.6.6 (-1-386), I stumbled
accross one reason why bootcd seems to hang after it displays

  Extracting /ram1.cpio.gz

If left for a long time (minutes rather than hours) you then see cpio
errors then the cause is probably due to  DEVFS=no  in bootcdwrite.conf,
when it is actually built into the kernel.

Setting  DEVFS=yes  will cure this problem, or recompile the kernel
without devfs support entirely. Alternatively, to avoid recompiling the
vanilla kernel, add devfs=nomount to the APPEND string in
bootcdwrite.conf, and ensure that the devfs daemon does not start by
editing /etc/default/devfsd and setting MOUNT=no in that file.

Also check google to see reasons why the automount should always be left
off (I think I saw this in an IBM article).