mkinitrd: Can't create temp dir, exiting...??

Ok so I'm trying to compile a new kernel I have read several tutorials on them and I followed them and it always fails at the same point. when I try to do

/sbin/mkinitrd /boot/initrd-2.4.20-4 2.4.20-4

I get the message
mkinitrd: Can't create temp dir, exiting

I've tried to use all the options for specifying root device temp directory and anything else I could think of. The directory is there it's writable but for some reason it just won't go.

anybody have any ideas?

Oh yeah the part where it fails in the script is here.

# should be nothing to change below...

PATH=/sbin:/usr/sbin:$PATH

tmp_dir=`mktemp -qd $root_dir/$tmp_dir/mkinitrd.XXXXXX`
if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
echo "$0: Can't create temp dir, exiting..."
exit 1
fi

Are you root when you try this?

Yes I'm logged in as root when I tried this. I've also tried this using a terminal window in X and without X.

You may have a problem with mktemp. If you look in man mktemp there are a couple examples you can try just to see if mktemp is working properly.

Well I finally managed to get it to build the initrd I had to use the -t -k and -i flags instead of passing the parameters directly. Not sure if this is new with Suse 8.2 or not.

But I still can't get it to boot on the new kernel. I keep getting a panic on trying to load the reiserfs modules.

I orginally tried to compile reiserfs into the Kernal but it would error while compiling so I imagine there is some problem with it. I'll just try again some other time.

Thanks for the answers.

Tobias