Everything goes black! (no Grub menu)

[sagipolley]

I have installed v1.2 using the stage 3 tarball (I only have a dial-up connection...). I followed the instructions to the letter (I think), but I can't get it to boot.

More specifically, GRUB won't start at bootup. The word "GRUB" appears in the lower left of the screen for a fraction of a second, then everything goes black.

In the Gentoo install, untarring the tarball apparently populates /boot (and /boot/grub) with all the necessary files (except the kernel image), so you do not have to run grub-install. I just did:

grub
root (hd2,0)
setup (hd2)
quit

(My Gentoo install is on /dev/hdd, which comes out as hd2 because of the CD burner on /dev/hdb). I also created an appropriate /boot/grub/menu.lst file.

Another clue--In my existing Redhat setup (on /dev/hdc), I tried adding lines for my Gentoo installation to /etc/grub.conf (on Redhat, /boot/grub/menu.lst is a symlink to /etc/grub.conf), but when I select Gentoo, it gives me error 17 (unknown filesystem type, I think) on /dev/hdd1.

(Note: I use System Commander to multi-boot, which then takes me into GRUB or Win on the appropriate HD.)

Any ideas what I am doing wrong? Will running grub-install help me?

TIA,

Martin

[sagipolley]

I forgot to mention my partitions:

/dev/hdd1 (/boot) is ext2
/dev/hdd2 (swap) is swap
/dev/hdd3 (/) is ext3

[pjp]

What other HDs do you have in your system, and which IDE channel are they on?
_________________
Quis separabit? Quo animo?

[sagipolley]

Thanks for the response--I ran grub-install, which fixed the problem.

I don't understand why the default instructions did not work for me. Maybe if this has happened to more than a few people, it would be worth adding a note in the installation instructions (e.g. "if the GRUB menu does not appear after you reboot, run grub-install").

Thanks,

Martin