hang during boot - mount: only root can do that

[Joel Roth <joelz@pobox.com>]

Hello Debian Illuminati,

In the past I've successfully booted a root
filesystem created by copying a bootable system using rsync -avx
(excluding the special directories /sys, /dev, /proc and /tmp
which I create and adjust permissions as necessary.) 

This time I created an ext4 partition, made my rsync copy,
set up a grub entry.

The kernel is 2.6.36, OS is sid, the /etc/fstab entry is:

    /dev/sda7 /  ext4 defaults,noatime,errors=remount-ro 0 1

Rebooting, I get this error:

	INIT: version 2.88 booting
	using makefile-style concurrent boot in runlevel S
	mount: only root can do that (effect UID is 1000)

Similar errors continue, with warnings about a read-only
filesystem, compounding until the system
hangs.

Any ideas what could be wrong?

Thanks,

-- 
Joel Roth