I made changes recommended by replies to my original message since I have no idea what the drive's /dev files will be called on the new system. Low and behold, I get the error on booting both older 2.6.32 and new 2.6.34 kernels! It starts to boot up just fine but then panics at the root device which it cannot find.
Since my knoppix disc does not have lvm, I cannot fix it. No Debian right now :-( What can I do? (Writing this from the old knoppix 3.4 from a web-mail interface.)
