You can also roll the same CPIO archive into your linux kernel by going into the build system and specifying that you want the initramfs to contain the files in

You can also roll the same CPIO archive into your linux kernel by going into the build system and specifying that you want the initramfs to contain the files in the gen_init_cpio list referenced here. I forget exactly which flags do this but I use it all the time right now.