Recent changes broke mkinitrd?

[Stephen Hemminger <shemminger@osdl.org>]

Recent (post 2.5.67) versions of the kernel break the creation
of the initial ram disk. This is on RH 8.0 but probably is more
wide spread.

The failure mode is:
# mkinitrd /tmp/initrd.2.5.67 2.5.67
tar: ./bin: Cannot mkdir: No space left on device
tar: ./bin/nash: Cannot open: No such file or directory
tar: ./bin/insmod: Cannot open: No such file or directory
tar: ./bin/modprobe: Cannot open: No such file or directory
tar: ./etc: Cannot mkdir: No space left on device
tar: ./dev: Cannot mkdir: No space left on device
tar: ./dev/console: Cannot mknod: No such file or directory
tar: ./dev/null: Cannot mknod: No such file or directory
tar: ./dev/ram: Cannot mknod: No such file or directory
tar: ./dev/systty: Cannot mknod: No such file or directory
tar: ./dev/tty1: Cannot mknod: No such file or directory
tar: ./dev/tty2: Cannot mknod: No such file or directory
tar: ./dev/tty3: Cannot mknod: No such file or directory
tar: ./dev/tty4: Cannot mknod: No such file or directory
tar: ./loopfs: Cannot mkdir: No space left on device
tar: ./proc: Cannot mkdir: No space left on device
tar: ./sysroot: Cannot mkdir: No space left on device
tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors

The problem is not the increase size of modules but instead something
changed with ext2/ext3? 

                 Running kernel
                 2.5.67-bk  2.4.18
                 *-------*------*
	  2.5.67 | Fails |  Ok  |
mkinitrd         *-------*------*
          2.4.18 | Fails |  Ok  |
                 *-------*------*

2.5.67 is okay, but the latest kernel from bk is not.