grub 1.99 configuration

[Bruce Dubbs]

I'm trying to manually run grub-mkconfig to establish grub-1.99 
installation instructions for Linux From Scratch.

I am getting:

grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
  /usr/sbin/grub-probe: error: cannot stat `/dev/root'

Doing some investigating grub-mkconfig is running:
  /usr/sbin/grub-probe --target=device /

Drilling down, grub-probe is doing:
  device_name = grub_guess_root_device (path);

Which in turn is doing:
  grub_find_root_device_from_mountinfo( "/", NULL );

This is reading /proc/self/mountinfo.  The problem here is that this 
file does not give the device, but specifies /dev/root:

13 1 8:15 / / rw,relatime - ext3 /dev/root 
rw,errors=continue,barrier=0,data=writeback

The kernel is 2.6.39.1, but 2.6.37 seems to give the same thing.
grub-probe should be able to detect /dev/sda15, but fails on newer kernels.

grub-probe for grub-1.98 works fine.  A grep there shows no use of
/proc/self/mountinfo.

Suggestions?

  -- Bruce