On Mon, 2007-12-03 at 18:48 -0800, Daniel B. Thurman wrote: > >From: fedora-list-bounces@xxxxxxxxxx > >[mailto:fedora-list-bounces@xxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Tod Merley > >Sent: Monday, December 03, 2007 1:52 PM > >To: For users of Fedora > >Subject: Re: Grub clarification > > > > > >On Dec 3, 2007 10:53 AM, Daniel B. Thurman <dant@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > >> > >> I am trying to install F8 onto my old system and having > >> trouble getting grub to find the drive. Here is the story. > >> [snip!] > > > >Hi Daniel B. Thurman! > > > >Two things come to mind: > > > >1. HW! Some drives and CMOS combinations just do not work. Check the > >CMOS client, that it sees the drive and that the drive is high on the > >boot list. Check to see that it is Master on the first IDE bus. > >Since it is an old system you might do well to load the defaults and > >edit the boot list (a "until you shut the power off" fix for a bad > >CMOS battery). > > > >2. Mis-placed or malformed Master Boot Record (MBR). The MBR needs to > >be the very first 512 bytes of the disk - loading GRUB on the second > >partition sounds strange although the MBR can be built to find GRUB > >anywhere. To help sort that one out I refer you to a Google search on > >"grub thestarman" and the GRUB manual. > > > >Good Hunting! > > > >Tod > > > > Yeah, that is part of my original problem. I have several other disks > and they are attached to SCSI drives as well. The BIOS is a bit screwy > in try to determine the order of how disks are being read and which comes > first? The SCSI drives or the IDE drives? I still couldn't figure this > out. The system is: VA Linux Systems: 501. Pretty old. > > When I first started with F8-Live, the screen showing custom partitions > displayed in order: > > /dev/sda SCSI disk 1 > /dev/sdb SCSI disk 2 > /dev/sdc IDE-0 Primary disk 3 > /dev/sdd IDE-0 Secondary disk 4 > > So in THAT case, I tried to install GRUB in /dev/sdc1 and choosed > the Advanced Options to set MBR @ /dev/sdc1. This did not work. > > So - then I decided to remove ALL SCSI drives and in doing so, I > was left with: > > /dev/sda IDE-0 Primary disk 1 > /dev/sdb IDE-0 Secondary disk 2 > > So, I am focusing on this right now trying to get things going > but then again, I am still not able to get GRUB to get started > and all I see on a boot is a black screen with the word: GRUB > at the top-left corner of my monitor. ---- again...try my suggestion to boot with rescue disc and run through grub-install /dev/sda Note...with scsi drives in place, it's likely that you would have to tell grub to boot from... root (hd3,0) without the scsi hard drives in place... root (hd0,0) Craig
