Can someone please help me? Why does init fail to start?

[William Bierman]

Hello.  I setup the partitions/slices correctly, extracted the correct
files to each, and installed the kernel and initialized the boot
sector.  The kernel loads succesfully but is unable to succesfully
hand over control to the init process.  I established this by putting
print debug statements at the point where the kernel calls init via
execve(), and at the start of init.  The kernel print statement is
shown, however the init statement is not.

Any clues?

Thanks!