HP Vectra XU 6/200 and GRUB total failure

[David Balazic]

Hi!

I was unable to make GRUB work on this system :

HP Vectra XU 6/200 , BIOS version : GG.06.13

When installed on disk MBR ( hd0,  only disk on system ;
IDE  primary master ) on boot I got a screen full of GRUB :
GRUB GRUB GRUB GRUB GRUB GRUB GRUB GRUB GRUB GRUB
GRUB GRUB GRUB GRUB GRUB GRUB GRUB GRUB GRUB GRUB
GRUB GRUB GRUB GRUB GRUB GRUB GRUB GRUB GRUB GRUB
GRUB GRUB GRUB GRUB GRUB GRUB GRUB GRUB GRUB GRUB

and it continued to write that in an endless loop.

If I loaded GRUB from a floppy, there were the following
problems :

 - geometry mismatch : 
16383/16/63 is written on the disk, is set in BIOS,
is used by linux , is used in the partition tables ( classic
msdos tables, created by redhat linux 8.0 installer ( parted ))

but grub sometimes uses 1023/240/63
I tried to force it with the command "geometry (hd0) 16383 16 63",
but it has no effect, grub still reports it as 1023/240/63.

 - but even when grub gets the correct geometry, it does not work.
   When accessing any partition, for example "cat (hd0,0)/test.txt",
   it complains "Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x83"
   Of course it can't load the kernel either.
   This was with a properly formatted ext2 partition.
   I tested it with a FAT partition and got the same result :
   "Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x6"

LILO on the other hand works just fine ( without the lba32 option,
with it it hangs at loading , only "LI" is printed )

Sometimes it also happened ( grub loaded from floppy ) that the geometry
command started printing the partitions and then felt into an endless
loop.
It printed the four existing partition one after another, upto 100
times,
when I reset the computer.

The grub on floppy was version 0.93
On hd : grub-0.92-7 ( redhat patched )

-- 
David Balazic
--------------
"Be excellent to each other." - Bill S. Preston, Esq., & "Ted" Theodore
Logan
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - -