grub-install seems to be wiping my partitions

[Pete]

Duncan,

I have to disagree. Yum is fantastic and a huge
improvement over the former lilo. The problem is that
you are trying to do too much too soon. You said you
are a newbie, but double-booting is an advanced
function. Why would you want to double-boot when you
already have Linux? It's got everything. (Yes, yes, I
also did, when I first switched back when Redhat 5.0
first came out. Now, it's weeks before I need to enter
Windows, and then, it's generally just to finally
update all the patches and bugfixes, just to keep it
up to date and then get back to Linux, again.)

I had almost the identical problem, a few nights ago,
to the one you are describing. I had had an
unpartitioned space physically in front of the
partition that Linux was on. I complicated the problem
by creating a partition in this empty space, hence the
names of my partitions changed: /dev/hda6 became
/dev/hda7 and so on. Dutifully, I edited /etc/fstab
and /boot/grub/grub.conf and rebooted, thinking how
smart I was for having attended to all the
necessities. Suddenly grub gave me the error 22, can't
find stage 1.5 message. Stage 1.5? I have never worked
with those stages before. Shit! What now? And I
couldn't even get onto the Internet to look for help,
because without grub, I couldn't even resort to
Windows. A little shaken, but still nonplussed, I
inserted the rescue disc and booted the computer.
Stunned, I was told that my partition, or part of it
(!) "might" be mounted on /mnt/sysimage. Holy shit!
Was everything lost? I was up until past 4 am on this
for 2 weeknights in a row and it added 10 years to my
apparent age.

Anyway, I rebooted again and finally the BIOS, or
whatever, finally got the partition table synced and I
was able to mount my system with the rescue disc at
/mnt/sysimage. I did a chroot /mnt/sysimage, cd there
and ls just to make sure, and then grub-install
/dev/hda. It gave me some output about the drives
found, hd0 and fd0, I think, and then, exit to get out
of chroot, and exit again to cause the rescue mode
shell to reboot. Whew! It worked and my system was
back. That was a close call.

Anyway, for dual booting with Windows XP (maybe 2000,
too), I have found that installing grub to the MBR of
the first hard drive, /dev/hda, is best. Windows has
it's boot loader in the first sector of the first
partition of this drive, so both co-exist nicely.
Also, I really would recommend making a small /boot
partition on your first hard drive, about 500Mb is
oodles and oodles. Reinstall Linux, or just cp -ax all
of your /boot contents (not the directory, just the
contents) to this partition, make the change in
/etc/fstab to get it mounted at boot time, and... I
have gotten off topic LOL

Anyway, there is a bit of learning that I had to do to
get this thought through. I believe I finally
understand and I hope to share it with you here. Like
you, I wish there was consistency to make things
easier, but for whatever reason, there isn't. Linux
calls the hard drive partitions /dev/hda1, hda2...
hdb1, hdb2, etc. Grub calls them (hd0,0), (hd0,1)...
(hd1,0), (hd1,1), etc. This is really confusing. To
make matters worse, you have to use both methods to
get everything working right. Here is how I have come
to understand it, and it seems to work: any commands
that go to Grub, use Grub's system; any commands that
go to Linux, use Linux' system. Sounds good? Well, it
is about to get complicated...

/boot/grub/grub.conf, the grub configuration file,
should really only use grub's syntax, but it doesn't.
It uses both! The splashimage line and the root
(hd0,4) line under the title section use grub syntax,
but the line beginning with kernel in the title
section uses the Linux syntax (here you are sending a
command to the kernel, telling it where the /(root)
filesystem is located).

Anyway, I hope this helps you; it sure did help me and
I finally got it all configured just how I want it.

Pete

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