James Pifer wrote:
I posted this to the redhat list, but there isn't much activity. I haveCan you use the grub command line to setup your kernel and initrd images, then "boot"? I have to do this sometimes while I'm fighting a troublesome box. For example someone will put unsupported hw in a bix and mkinitrd will silently fail (no initrd in /boot). Once you understand the hd# syntax and the TAB completion for disks, partitions, paths and filenames, it's darn useful.
a problem with grub on a redhat 9 machine that I'm hoping someone here
might be able to help with. I have a Fedora system that appears to have
the same problem.
grub> root (<TAB>
...should give drive info.
grub> root (hd0,<TAB>
...should give partition info.
grub root (hd0,0)/<TAB>
...should show the files/directories in the drive's partition.
(This is from memory; pls. someone correct me if this is wrong--sometimes I have to use help and fiddle with it to remember).
This link helps me, too: http://portal.suse.com/sdb/en/2002/09/fhassel_grub_overview.html
Also I sometimes use the CD "linux rescue" mode: 1) see whats mounted under /mnt/sysimage with "mount" (is it sane?) 2) check /mnt/sysimage/etc/fstab (is it sane?) 3) "e2label" to check the partition labels (are the boot and root paritions named properly?) 4) "chroot /mnt/sysimage", then play with "rpm" to remove/reinstall kernels, etc. 5) run the /sbin/grub-install command and see if it comes up clean.
Anyway, this is the general course I follow on a machine that won't boot. At work people open their boxes and add IDE or SCSI drives, reorder things, it gets messy. When they do this I often have to go futz with the BIOS boot order, or screw around with the SCSI card settings.
The above tools/operations/checks have always worked for me, in every case.
Here are the listings off my FC2 box:
[ boot]$ ls config-2.6.5-1.358 initrd-2.6.8-1.521.img vmlinuz-2.6.5-1.358 config-2.6.8-1.521 lost+found vmlinuz-2.6.8-1.521 grub System.map-2.6.5-1.358 initrd-2.6.5-1.358.img System.map-2.6.8-1.521
[ boot]$ ls grub/ device.map ffs_stage1_5 menu.lst splash.xpm.gz vstafs_stage1_5 e2fs_stage1_5 grub.conf minix_stage1_5 stage1 xfs_stage1_5 fat_stage1_5 jfs_stage1_5 reiserfs_stage1_5 stage2
I once had to reinstall grub to get all the "stage" files back. They went missing somehow.
--- John
