[ILUG] Grub Boot issue

[Stephen Brooks]

Darragh Bailey wrote:
> Quoting Darragh Bailey <felix at compsoc.nuigalway.ie>:
> 
> <snipped>
> 
>>I could try from grub command line as well, if thats the only way, but I'm
>>sure
>>there is something simple I'm missing that ananconda does that I don't.
>>
> 
> 
> As it turns out I managed to sort this out myself. Eventually.
> 
> It appears to be due to the fact that I'm using a RAID controller for a number
> of hard drives and that there is a hard drive connected to my IDE controller as
> well.
> 
> As a result the BIOS will report the drives like so
> 
> /dev/hda
> /dev/hde
> /dev/hdf
> /dev/hdg
> /dev/hdh
> 
> But /dev/hdf is the drive that is booted from and therefore grub needs to know
> that its actually (hd0) and not (hd2).
> 
> I'll go through what I did in the shell which is the standard method but doesn't
> work, and is what I think is also called when you run grub-install
> $ umount /boot
> $ grub
> grub> device (hd0) /dev/hdf
> grub> root (hd0,0)
>  Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
> grub> setup (hd0)
>  Checking if "/boot/grub/stage1" exists... no
>  Checking if "/grub/stage1" exists... yes
>  Checking if "/grub/stage2" exists... yes
>  Checking if "/grub/e2fs_stage1_5" exists... yes
>  Running "embed /grub/e2fs_stage1_5 (hd0)"...  16 sectors are embedded.
> succeeded
>  Running "install /grub/stage1 (hd0) (hd0)1+16 p (hd0,0)/grub/stage2 /grub/grub
> .conf"... succeeded
> Done.
> grub> exit
> $
> 
> where as the correct method appears to be instead of 'setup (hd0)', I needed to
> run,
> grub> install /grub/stage1 d (hd0) /grub/stage2 p (hd0,0)/grub/grub.conf
> 
> 
> the extra d option appears to be required since my drives are reported in a
> different order than the BIOS reports them to be. What I haven't yet worked out
> or followed up on is the (hd0)1+16 item.
> 
> 
It's the offset in hd0 of where grub installs stage1_5.

	My motherboard has a Highpoint HPT370 "Raid" controller that likes to 
write 4 bytes of zeros for aparently no good reason to where grub 
usually places stage1_5 making grub terminally ill with a red herring 
error of 21 (Selected disk does not exist).  Just mentioned it since I 
acquired several gray hairs trying to get it to play ball and wanted to 
point the way to this article that cast light on the issue.
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.boot-loaders.grub.bugs/4481
[snip]

-- 
Stephen Brooks <stephen at lincor.com>                     17 Dame Court
Software Engineer                                   Dublin 2, Ireland
Lincor Solutions Ltd.                          Ph: +353 (0) 1 6746413