Distributions these days have something called initrd files, that are supposed to be created for each kernel. These files contain modules that are required by the kernel. They are just compressed init files that you can uncompress or mount. Here are some commands that I learnt to view files in the initrd files.
zcat initrd-2.6.8.1-7.img > /tmp/initrd-2.6.8
file initrd-2.6.8
cpio -i -F initrd-2.6.8 --list | less
According to some articles I read, the file can just be mounted through a loop back device but I had a terrible time trying to do that.
