On Sat, 2007-02-17 at 17:13 +1030, Tim wrote: > Of which the only part of GRUB that gets changed, by that, is > the /boot/grub.conf file. All the other bits of GRUB that were > installed in the MBR, etc., are left alone. That's what I thought. The update is probably a bunny trail, because all the updates typically do is modify the contents of the drive. In my case the MBR seems suspect. > That leads to a few possible conclusions: > > You have other devices on your system, perhaps removable ones that > aren't always there (like USB drives), and the system miscounts which > drive it should be booting from. Though I wouldn't expect you to even > get as far as the stuck GRUB screen for that error. Or that you'd get > as far as the GRUB menu, then it'd get lost. I can rule this out. I have 2 external peripherals (both USB), and they're always on. So the bootup configuration doesn't change. > You've got a wonky drive, and it's hit and miss that other things on it > manage to be read. In particular, boot records, or the partitions where > the other parts of GRUB are stored as files (stage 2, etc.). Though Yep, that is/was my fear. Although the contents of my partitions seem intact, and now that my system is booting again, everything acts completely normal (no fsck errors on bootup, it has run fine for the past few days. > those stages don't get changed during updates, either. You might want > to run a smart test on it to see what the drive says about itself. man > smartctl That's exactly what I was looking for! I had not heard of smartctl before. I ran both a short and long test, and both passed with no errors. So I think my hard drive itself is fine. > You had a strange partition set up, where one overlaps another, so > things get damaged as something is saved. Though I can't imagine that > happening, unless you partitioned by hand. This probably isn't the issue. I partitioned the disk I think a year or two ago when it was brand new. I installed FC4 and used the more manual of the partitioning tools to do it at the time. > You have other hardware (power, motherboard, etc.) issues. This is probably the most likely issue. I suspect the MB, or more specifically the BIOS. It's a Gigabyte board, which has traditionally been solid hardware for me. But fiddling with the BIOS is what I think brought my system back up. Too bad there's no smartctl tool for BIOSes, or is there? Thanks for your help, Dan > >
