How to mount a linux initrd or other cpio archive

I wanted to take a look at what was inside my initrd images to see what modules they had, and figured out they were gzipped cpio archives (recent Debian system). First I unzipped it, then extracted it, and decided that I really should just be able to mount it with -o loop. Didn't figure that out yet, but I found a program

called archivemount which works well, just like mount but for archives.

The Gnome archive manager, when I clicked on the initrd, couldn't deal with the fact that it was both gzipped and and archive, but if unzipped, would display it nicely.

A page with the above info didn't appear prominently in search results; thus, for your viewing pleasure, this one.