grub and flying elephants

[Robert Nichols]

akonstam at trinity.edu wrote:
> The subject line is for those who remember Dumbo and the line "I guess I
> will have seen everything when I see an elephant fly".
> 
> Well Grub has shown me something I have never seen before so I need help.
> 
> We have 7 identical machines bought at the same time. They are the Dwarf
> machines. I have successfully got Dwarf1 and Dwarf7 up and going with FC2.
> 
> This morning I loaded exactly the same software through untarring an image
> of Dwarf7 on Dwarf2, 3 and 4. I changed the entries in the hosts, network and
> ifcfg-eth0 files. I changed the grub.conf so it looks like the ones that
> work. I will include a copy below. When I run grub-install the all three
> machines return with the error:
> the file /boot/grub/stage1  not read correctly.
> 
> I copied the whole grub directory from a working machine and got the same
> error. On another machine I zeroed the boot part of the MBR and got the same
> error from grub-install. I am clueless. Any help would be appreciated.

That almost has to be a problem with the device map, though why that
would differ on identical machines is a mystery.  Different BIOS
setup, perhaps?  Try deleting /boot/grub/device.map, or run
grub-install with the "--recheck" option.

That "file $file not read correctly" message is coming from the
grub-install shell script.  If you take a look at the script you
might be able to figure out what is happening.

--
Bob Nichols         rnichols42 at comcast.net