panic after rsync

[dsavage at peaknet.net]

The 48G hard drive in my Thinkpad is throwing smartd errors, so I'm trying
to migrate my existing FC4 installation to one of those new 120G Seagate
Momentus drives. The difference between their sizes is giving me fits. I
tried prepping the new drive with LVM2 before running rsync, but I
couldn't mount its partitions with a temp USB2 connect because FC4
apparently can't handle two drives using identical lvm names.

Since all I need are the /boot, / and swap partitions I gave up on lvm and
tried the old fashioned way: /dev/hda1-3. The trouble is, when I rsync
everything over from the old to the new drive, some lvm contamination
seems to migrate along with my files.

While booted with the Rescue CD I've:
 (1) Re-labeled the / and /boot partitions
 (2) Edited /etc/fstab to match the new disk's LABLELs
 (3) Run mkinitrd with "--omit-lvm-modules"
 (4) Re-run grub-install

Now the new disk boots thru grub, then panics after:
  Red Hat nash version 4.2.15 starting
  ERROR opening /dev/console!!!!: 2
  error dup2'ing fd of 0 to 0
  error dup2'ing fd of 0 to 1
  error dup2'ing fd of 0 to 2
  WARNING: can't access (null)
  exec of init ((nul)) failed!!!: 14
  Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init!

Can anyone offer any insights into what is causing this and what needs
fixing? Thanks.

--Doc Savage
  Fairview Heights, IL