Booting off msdos AND using initrd?

I would like my kernel to read a ramdisk file off of an msdos
partition.  I think the way to do this is to put the following on an
msdos partition:

1.  vmlinux (linux kernel)
2.  /dev directory (to mount devfs on)
3.  ramdisk.img (the 
4.  linuxrc program (see below)

My bootloader finds vmlinux on the dos partition and boots it.
The linuxrc program loads the ramdisk and does a pivot root.

I think the above will work.  I have two questions:

1.  is there an easier way?
2.  my kernel is not finding linuxrc.  Here are the arguments I'm using:
    go vmlinux devfs=only root=301 rw init=/linuxrc
    Is there some special path syntax I need for the init=<path>?

Dave