Yeah, this was an installer bug. You need to boot, stopping at the grub menu, edit the boot entry, and change root=/dev/sda1 to root=/hda1. Once booted, edit /boot/grub/menu.lst, find the line with kopt_2_6 and removed it, then run "sudo update-grub".
** Changed in: linux-source-2.6.17 (Ubuntu) Status: Needs Info => Rejected -- Edgy boot failure after kernel update https://launchpad.net/bugs/59776 -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs