grub once again.

[nempo]

I'm trying to install grub on a hdd with one partition, the partition is a 32Mb big ext2. Since this is/will be a mini-install I'm installing grub on the hdd on another computer. On the computer that installs grub the hdd sits as /dev/hdc and the 32Mb partition being /dev/hdc1.
I have tried to install grub doing the following:

#grub
>root (hd1,0)
>setup (hd1)
>quit

But when trying to boot this hdd in its home grub spits out 'Grub hard drive error' or something similar. In Vmware, it prints Grub then hangs.

The /boot/grub/ dir looks like this on the 32Mb partition:
/boot/grub/...
...e2fs_stage1_5
...grub.conf
...menu.lst -> grub.conf
...stage1
...stage2

.../../bzImage


PS. I did get it to work when I turned of LBA on the drive but then seeing how I was always greeted by the grub prompt I tried to reinstall grub. To my horror the pre-LBA errors returned.

Any help is appreciated.

[Beforegod]

root(hd1,0)
find /boot/grub/stage1
setup (hd1)
this is the way it should work ..
_________________
iGentoo auf iMac (anno 2007)

[nempo]

[Rajesh]

Some ideas:

Boot from a floppy to see if the boot process goes through completely.

Try making a small boot partition separate from your root partition
and keeping your kernel bzImage and /boot stuff in there. On older
systems, the BIOS boot loader responsible for launching your hard disk
boot manager has problems reading beyond a few KB/MB of your hard drive.
Having /boot as your very first partition of a small enough size to
accomodate your kernel and grub files would overcome this limitation.

Is there anything else about your hardware that you can share? how old
is the BIOS, motherboard, IDE, harddrive, etc?

I would also check if there is a flash update available for your BIOS.

Good luck.

[nempo]

the 32MB partition is the only thing on the hdd, it is located at the very beginning of the drive so a seperate boot partition should'nt be needed.
I have no idea what the name of the mobo is , the only thing I can find printed on it that resembles a name is '5V-1A' (5 volt, 1 amp ?) and to the right of that it says 'VER 2.0'. When booting the computer the bios displays the mobos name as '#J1-002' and the bios is of type 'Award modular BIOS' version '4.51PG'. The hdd is a 'Western digital Caviar 22500' if I'm reading it correct.

The chipset are VT82C585VPX and VT82C586A.

[Rajesh]

The problem is that unless a separate partition has been defined at the
beginning of the hdd for /boot, there is no guarantee that the /boot
directory (and the kernel) data physically resides in the beginning of
your single partition.

Also, since this is your only hdd, in your GRUB setup, you would need to
refer to the partition as (hd0,0) instead of (hd1,0). You can use GRUB's
tab completion command if you can get that far:

On boot, when you see the GRUB main screen, hit 'e' couple of times or 'c' to get to the
GRUB command line. Then, type "root (hd" and hit TAB. This will show you
available partitions.


Trying to boot from a floppy (or a CD) would help you in narrowing this problem
down, I think.

[nempo]

It is the only hdd in the computer in which it will reside, it is not the single hdd in which it is atm and hence why it is labeled as (hd1,0) by grub.
I can boot just fine by using the grub I have installed on (hd0,0) by typing 'root (hd1,0)', 'kernel /boot/bzImage root=/dev/hdc1' and 'boot' but this dosn't help me.

[nempo]

I just got lilo installed and it seems to boot just fine, both in vmware and live.
I'm not touching anything related to boot-loaders on this hdd from now on, don't want to break anything.