[Little OT] grub and udev root device

["Hemlock" <michael@etalon.net>]

Hello,

I'm wondering if its possible to rename my / device with udev and get grub 
to see it and boot it?
Here's what I tried:

kernel 2.6.17

/etc/udev/rules.d/010local.rules

BUS="scsi", ID="0:0:0:0", NAME="sata%n"

I have one partition on my sata drive so I edited fstab
to mount / on to /dev/sata1 instead of /dev/sda1

I then edited grub and changed root=/dev/sda1 to root=/dev/sata1
I also made a new initrd image just in case:

# mkinitrd -o /boot/initrd.img-2.6.17sata -r /dev/sata1
     (I edited the grub menu too to use the new initrd.img)

If I reboot, I get a kernel panic, something about cannot open dev/console
   attempted to kill init

If I reboot again and edit the grub boot loader and point the root back 
to /dev/sda1, the system boots fine, although a 
# df -h 
shows / mounted to /dev/sata1

Is it even possible to boot off a customly named root device?

Thanks
Mike