I think that rc.sysinit is too big, it does many things that could be done
early (or late) in the normal boot sequence.  It also does some things that
can lock a machine (loading sound modules) that would make recovering with
single user impossible.  Attached is a prelimarly patch that moves the
kernel /boot stuff into an early part of the SysV init, and the sound
drivers into a later part, also saving the sound driver settings at service
shutdown (rather than in rc.halt).  

The patch needs a cleanup, a sainity check (I don't have sound in my test
machine yet), and symlinks etc need to be added, but this gives you a
start.

This is similar to bug 14672 and I hope that both can find there way into a
future initscripts release.