Re: "grub" command works, but GRUB boot loader hangs

[Ben Liblit]

Jeremy Katz wrote:
> So, to clarify, in your BIOS, you have boot order set to something like
> "A/SCSI/C" or something similar to that (depending of course on BIOS
> manufacturer and how they decided they wanted to denote things).

More or less.  My BIOS boot order is set to "A: then C:".  The other
choices are "C: then A:" and "C: only".

Observe that my BIOS does not, in and of itself, know anything about
SCSI.  Booting off of my SCSI disk apparently involves extra magic
perpetrated by my Adaptec SCSI controller.  The controller has several
"advanced" settings relating to BIOS and boot issues, including the
following:

     Boot Target ID:  0    [note that my boot disk has SCSI ID 0]
     Host Adapter BIOS:  Enabled
     Support Removable Disks Under BIOS as Fixed Disks:  Boot Only
     Extended BIOS Translation For DOS Drives > 1 GByte:  Enabled
     BIOS Support for Bootable CD-ROM:  Enabled
     BIOS Support for Int13 Extensions:  Enabled

> Also, what does /boot/grub/device.map look like?

Initially I had no such file.  By taking a look at the grub-install
script I was able to figure out how to get the "grub" command to
create one.  Its contents are as follows:

    (fd0)   /dev/fd0
    (hd0)   /dev/hdc
    (hd1)   /dev/sda
    (hd2)   /dev/sdb

This mapping correct, insofar as "grub" has identified each and every
drive in my system with no extras and no omissions.  Using GRUB's
"geometry" command confirms that these are all well and good.  But
this is all when running under Linux.  When GRUB is operating on its
own, as a boot loader run from floppy, device detection falls apart.

> Since you are running Roswell and therefore have a recent kudzu, can you
> get the output of `/usr/sbin/kudzu -p -c FLOPPY`?

I'm actually running Red Hat Linux 7.1, not Roswell.  I decided to
take GRUB for a spin on its own, since I had recently had a very
positive GRUB installation experience on another (much newer) machine.
I used the Roswell RPM because it was expedient to do so.

I cannot install the Roswell kudzu without also upgrading to Roswell's
glibc, and that's not something I'm prepared to do just yet.  Instead,
in order to answer your question, I rebuilt kudzu from the Roswell
SRPM on my otherwise 7.1 system.  (Note that this includes the 7.1
builds of python and pciutils.)  I hope that this will be close enough
to what you had requested to still be useful.

    # /usr/sbin/kudzu -p -c FLOPPY
    -
    class: FLOPPY
    bus: MISC
    detached: 0
    device: fd0
    driver: unknown
    desc: "3.5" 1.44MB floppy drive"

> > Unplugging the secondary master IDE hard drive has no effect.  This is
> > surprising, because when GRUB is working correctly it should detect
> > this drive and make it available.
> 
> Actually, depending on your BIOS boot order and the contents of the
> device.map, this drive may not actually be accessible.

Fair enough.  I pointed that out because it struck me as noteworthy.
A GRUB that did not detect my IDE drive would be perfectly acceptable
provided that it did do the right thing on the SCSI side, since that's
where I actually boot.