I just discovered this was being caused due to sda1 and sda2 having the same UUID. I have no idea how this happened, but Grub and the Linux kernel had differing opinions on which partition to look at for the jacked up UUID.
** Attachment added: "shows two partitions with same UUID" http://librarian.launchpad.net/5321573/disk-volumes -- No 2.6.17-10-386 entry after Dapper -> Edgy upgrade https://launchpad.net/bugs/67965 -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
