fresh install for dual boot with winxp : grub hangs

[Phil Schaffner]

On Wed, 2004-06-30 at 09:15 -0700, Hans Horn wrote:
>> here's what fdisk tells me: 
> >>  
> >> fdisk /dev/hda
> >> /dev/hda    hda1    hp-recovery
> >>             hda2    NTFS (XP boot)
> >>  
> >> fdisk /dev/hdd
> >> /dev/hdd    hdd1    swap
> >>             hda3    ext3 (Linux boot)
> > 
> > Did you mean hdd3?  hdd2?  What else is on hdd? Do you have /boot
> and /
> > or is everything but swap on one partition.
> 
> hdd2 is an empty fat32 partition - dunno how it got to be.
> I don't have a /boot partition

So FC2 is on hdd3?  Assuming that...

> master: hda
> slave1: nothing
> master2: dvd/cd
> slave2: hdd
...
> recommendations?

I still suspect grub is getting confused.  May still want to check BIOS
setting for hard drives.  On some systems should be "LBA" or "OTHER"
rather than "DOS".  If that doesn't help, given that nothing is on IDE0
slave, easiest would be to move hdd to hdb.  Assuming use of labels in /
etc/fstab, should only have one Linux filesystem partition entry
requiring no changes:

LABEL=/    /      ext3       defaults        1 1

and for swap, change to

/dev/hdb1  swap   swap       defaults        0 0

grub.conf should then look something like:

# grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE:  You do not have a /boot partition.  This means that
#          all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /, eg.
#          root (hd1,2)
#          kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/sda2
#          initrd /initrd-version.img
#
#boot=/dev/hda
default=0
timeout=10
splashimage=(hd0,2)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
title Fedora Core (2.6.5-1.358)
        root (hd0,2)
        kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.5-1.358 ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
        initrd /initrd-2.6.5-1.358.img
title WinXP on hda2
        rootnoverify (hd1,0)
        chainloader +1

and /boot/grub/device.map should have

hd0    /dev/hda
hd1    /dev/hdb


Sooooo, boot to rescue mode (presumably - after HW change of 2nd HD from
IDE0 slave to IDE1 slave and given assumption of / now on hdb3) and
with /dev/hdb3 mounted on /mnt/sysimage, "chroot /mnt/sysimage", edit
/etc/fstab and /boot/grub/grub.conf and /boot/grub/device.map as above,
(or adjusted for reality), and "grub-install /dev/hda" (may not really
be necessary but could help).  Reboot and hope for the best!

Good luck,
Phil