Getting "can't load kernel" on a fresh install (5.4R)

[Andrew C. Brown]

I've been doing a fresh install, new file systems, slices, partitions
and so on, of 5.4 Release.

May layout is like this:

hd0: My original FBSD install v5.0. It boots fine.  10GB drive
hd1: Haven't dealt with this one yet. Nothing on it. But empty slices. 300GB
hd2: My new target
    (hd2,0,d)   mount to /boot    64MB
    (hd2,1,a)   mount to /           
    (hd2,1,b)   swap
    (hd2,1,d)   /var
    (hd2,1,e)   /tmp
    (hd2,1,f)   /usr                     around 180GB

Since I'm not installing on my first drive, I initially had a little
trouble getting GRUB to find hd2. I set these new disk partions to be
UFS2+S and it couldn't read them. So I got GRUB 0.95 which supposedly
does read UFS2 and it hasn't complained about the format since.

Since I was getting "can't load kernel", I have just been going straight
to the GRUB shell so I could step through it.

What's particularly confusing me is, I issue
grub> root (hd2,0,d)
response is>Filesystem is type UFS2, partition type 0xa5
which looks happy to me

So I issue
grub> kernel /loader   { not preceeded with /boot/ since this whole
partition hd2,0,d is going to be mounted at /boot }
response>
   [FreeBSD-a.out, loadaddr=0x200000, text=0x1000, data=0x32000,
bss=0x0. entry=0x200000]
To the extent of my knowledge, this also looks 'healthy'. But when I issue
grub> boot
I get

BTX loader 1.00 BTX version is 1.01
Console: internal video/keyboard
BIOS drive C: is disk0
BIOS drive D: is disk1
BIOS drive E: is disk2

BIOS 639kb/261056kB available memory

FreeBSD/i386 bootstrap loader, Revision 1.1
root@{something}.buffalo.edu  Sun May 8 (some time) 2005

\
can't load 'kernel'

type ? for list of commands, help for detailed help
OK
---------
Other details:

disk 1 & 2 are on separate channels of a PCI  UDMA133 controller by
Maxtor (Promise Tech). System BIOS is not picking up disk1 consistently
but that hasn't impacted my boot results.
disk 2 has no trouble being mounted as long as I boot off some other drive.
If I'd compiled my own kernel I would suspect that, but this is a clean
install.

So does anyone have a sense for where I should be placing my focus in
order to solve this? It just seems like it's gotta be something simple.
I've done enough head-banging on the table.

Andrew