mounting route device with kernel 2.6/reiserfs

[Haines Brown]

I'm experiencing insconsistent results from the same grub
configuration stanza when grub is installed on a hard disk MBR and
when installed on a floppy. 

Specifically, I am able to boot a hard disk (sdc, on which grub is not
yet installed) from from grub installed in the MBR of another disk,
sda) by using the configuration stanza:

    kernel /vmlinuz ro root=/dev/sdc1
    root (hd2,0)

When I put the same stanza on a grub floppy, I first experienced Error
15: File not found until I reversed the order:

    root (hd2,0)
    kernel /vmlinuz root=/dev/sdc1 ro

For a reason I don't understand, this allowed me to begin the boot
of the sdc disk from floppy up to the point of a kernal panic: 

    VFS: Cannot open root device "sdc1" or 08:21
    Please append correct "root=" option
    Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 08:21

So it appears that booting from sda bootloader allows the root fs to
be mounted, but not when I try to boot from the bootloader on
diskette. 

I'm running kernel 2.6.7-1-386 on sdc (and kernel 2.4.18-bf2.4 on
sda). I gather that when people compile the kernel they sometimes
cannot load the root fs, but the kernel I'm using is a stock kernel
that I did not recompile. 

I'm also worried that perhaps the filesystem I'm using somehow
prevents mounting the root. Both sda and sdc are using reiserfs. The
boot floppy, I believe, is vfat. 

I cannot see from the above information that the location of root can
be the problem. The root partition is sdc1, and there's a symlink 
/vmlinuz -> /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.7-1-386. I'm running sarge/testing on
both sda and sdc. There's no /boot/grub directory on sdc because I've
not installed grub on it yet.

-- 
      Haines Brown