I don't have an answer to the original problem, but I want to address the other remarks:
What I do find astonishing is, that your fstab does not include a /boot partition. I was told, that you must have a /boot partition My box doesn't know that, so it's been happily working for over a year without a boot partition. the other way is to compile a kernel which includes reiserfs. Does this also apply to ext3? I have, over the past year, changed from ext3 to reiserfs, back to ext3, then to (currently) reiserfs, all the time without a boot partition.
AFAIK, the kernel (2.4.10 and higher) handles both ext3 and reiserfs without complaints. As of late, I have the system on one HD and the swap partition on another, without problems. -- Regards, gr (in /usually/ balmy, sunny Florida's Suncoast) [powered by SuSE-7.3 Linux 2.4.10]