I'm working on old distro ( slackware 8.1 ) using a kernel 2.4.37.9 and I have the following problem.
 
I want to use a custom name for boot device, say for example /dev/root1, which can replace the standard ide device ( /dev/hdc1 ).

In the standard case I have 

      title Linux-2.4.37.9 hdc
        root (hd0,0)
        kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.37.9 ro root=/dev/hdc1 console=ttyS0,9600 console=tty0 apm=off
    		

I wanto to replace it as show belowe:
		
      title Linux-2.4.37.9 ccl-Test
        root (hd0,0)
        kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.37.9 ro root=/dev/ccl1 console=ttyS0,9600 console=tty0 apm=off
    	

	
		
Both /dev/hdc1 and /dev/ccl1 are block device with major/minor 22,1
See here:

    # ls -la /dev/hdc1 /dev/ccl1
    brw-rw----    1 root     disk      22,   1 Jun  9  2002 /dev/hdc1
    brw-rw-rw-    1 root     root      22,   1 Feb 20 15:04 /dev/ccl1

In the standard case the boot works well while in te second case, when I'm using the dev /dev/ccl1, I got the following error :

    VFS: connot open root device "ccl1" or 00:00
    Please append a correct "root=" boot option
    Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 00:00

I also added an initrd which set the real-root-dev
		
    echo 0x2201 > /proc/sys/kernel/real-root-dev

but I got the same error , with a different device value	

    VFS: connot open root device "ccl1" or 22:01
    Please append a correct "root=" boot option
    Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 22:01


Any suggestions ?