More adventures with grub2
 

Just finished using gdisk to convert my MSDOS partition table to
a GPT. Worked perfectly on the first try (whew).

Rebooted with grub2 to discover that grub2 couldn't see my shiny
new GPT :(

After holding my head in my sweaty palms for a few minutes, I
finally realized that grub didn't automatically load its module
called part_gpt, so I used the grub shell to load it, and my new
GPT was there after all (whew again).

I found and loaded the linux kernel from the root partition, which
resides in my new GPT, right? You see where this is going, right?

The kernel booted nicely -- and then the panic message appeared,
because, what else, I forgot to compile in support for GPT :(

So now I'm off to boot my gparted rescue CD and try to chroot
to the hard disk so I can compile a kernel with GPT support.

If that works I'm taking the rest of the day off. (I'm lying.)

Good thing I like this kind of fascinating learning experience.