Grub don't boot

[Andrei Korovikov]

Greetings,

My basic problem is that GRUB doesn't want to boot. Details:

I am running GNU GRUB 0.93 on a Red Hat 9.0 system.

I have two hard drives: a SCSI disk and an IDE disk. The SCSI disc is the
boot one and is divided into three partitions: /dev/sda1 is /boot, /dev/sda2
is swap, and /dev/sda3 is /. The IDE disk has a single partition on it:
/dev/hdb1 is /data. The boot order is floppy, then SCSI, then IDE.

I can make a GRUB floppy without any problems. I can boot off that floppy
without any problems, too: it boots to a GRUB prompt and then I do

root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.20-20.9smp root=/dev/sda3
initrd /initrd-2.4.20-20.9smp.img
boot

The system boots without any problems. However...

When I boot off that floppy to a GRUB prompt and try to install GRUB on the
hard drive the following happens:

grub> find /boot/grub/stage1
(hd0,0)

grub> setup (hd0,0)
 Error 17: Cannot mount selected partition

[Hmm... not good, let's try the following]

grub> root (hd0,0)
 Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83

grub> setup (hd0,0)
 Checking if "/boot/grub/stage1" exists... yes
 Checking if "/boot/grub/stage2" exists... yes
 Checking if "/boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5" exists... yes
 Running "embed /boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5 (hd0,0)"... failed (this is not
fatal)
 Running "embed /boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5 (hd0,0)"... failed (this is not
fatal)
 Running "install /boot/grub/stage1 (hd0,0) /boot/grub/stage2 p
/boot/grub/grub.conf "... succeeded
 Done.

[Looks like it's moderately happy... Let's try to take out the floppy and
reboot...]

What happens if I boot off the hard disk is that I get the words "GRUB " at
the beginning of the line and then the system freezes. I do not get the grub
prompt, the keyboard is dead, the only thing I can do is reach for the reset
button.

Put in the floppy, boot off it -- and the system comes up without any
difficulty...

Any idea what's happening?

Andrei

P.S. FWIW here is my /boot/grub/grub.conf

# grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE:  You have a /boot partition.  This means that
#          all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /boot/, eg.
#          root (hd0,0)
#          kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/sda3
#          initrd /initrd-version.img
#          boot=/dev/sda
default=0
timeout=10
splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
title Red Hat Linux (2.4.20-20.9)
        root (hd0,0)
        kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.20-20.9 ro root=/dev/sda3
        initrd /initrd-2.4.20-20.9.img
title Red Hat Linux (2.4.20-20.9smp)
        root (hd0,0)
        kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.20-20.9smp ro root=/dev/sda3
        initrd /initrd-2.4.20-20.9smp.img