Grub/MBR problem?

[SkyLeach]

Hey all. I posted this in the grub sticky but recieved no reply in the past couple of days so I was hoping making a new topic could get more eyes.

I've finished setting up a VIA based k7 motherboard with a 30G WD hd (stage 1 install). I just did a standard 3 partition install with hda1=boot, hda2=swap and hda3=/ hda1 is ext2, hda3 is reiserfs. The disk has not shown any errors and a reiserfsck and fsck both show the partitions and formats to be fine. The bootable flag is set on the first disk partition and grub installed with no errors (both grub-install and the traditional grub console install proceed without errors), yet the computer acts as though the disk isn't bootable.

I'm at a loss. I've had gentoo installed on a multiboot setup for this same system. On this same disk in fact.

The only possible clue I have is that I was forced to replace the HD ata cable because of i/o errors on the disk. The cable was old so I replaced it and ran disk checks and the disk checked out as fine. I've run the tests 4-5 times by now all with passing results.

Anybody have a clue what I might be doing wrong?

[JeliJami]

- is the hd jumpered as master?
- is it connected on your first IDE connector?
- is it being detected by your BIOS on boot?
- is your BIOS set to boot from this disk?
- how did your grub-install command looked like, exactly?

[SkyLeach]

- is the hd jumpered as master?
- is it connected on your first IDE connector?
- is it being detected by your BIOS on boot?
- is your BIOS set to boot from this disk?
- how did your grub-install command looked like, exactly?

yes
yes
yes
yes
blah blah blah no errors blah
if the list of detected drives isn't right stand on your head, kill a chicken and then fix some sh*t
/dev/fd0
/dev/hda

Sorry, i didn't have the exact quote.

[Xzet]

post your Grub config plz..

[no idea]

Okay, if hda1 is your /boot partition and hda3 is your / (root) partition, then the lines concerning the kernel booting in your grub.conf should look similar to this:

Code: Select all

title Gentoo 2.6.15-archck3
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/kernel-2.6.15-archck3 ro root=/dev/hda3 video=vesafb:ywrap,mtrr,1024x768-32@75 splash=verbose,theme:GoGentooGo quiet CONSOLE=/dev/tty1 udev
initrd (hd0,7)/boot/fbsplash-GoGentooGo-1024x768

note that the root and kernel part are actually important, the rest is mostly framebuffer splash crap....

then run grub:

Code: Select all

grub
root (hd0,0)
setup (hd0)
quit

i hope it helps