[clue-tech] GRUB woes (this is a LONG message, but I really need help on this)

[William]

Okay, I screwed up.  Now that that's out of the way, here's what I did.  :)

I have another new box (not the Dell PowerEdge) with the following hardware:
HP Pavilion (bleh, but it was donated, so I'll go with it).
Pentium III 800MHz ES (dunno what the ES means, but I suspect that it doesn't actually run the
full 800).
256 Megs RAM
Three HDDs:
HDD1 = 40Gig Unknown mfgr (not a popular name)
HDD2 = 38Gig Maxtor
HDD3 = 13Gig WD
CD-ROM
1 NIC
On-board, integrated (cheezy) Intel graphics card

Important note:  The drives are physically mapped to the IDE channels as follows (and I have
checked the DIPs on these drives several times over to confirm the Master/Slave relationships):
Primary IDE:  Master = HDD1, Slave = HDD2
Secondary IDE:  Master = HDD2, CD-ROM1
(makes sense, right?)

The machine has a "Made for Windows ME" decal on it, but it was running Windows XP Professional
_slowly_ when it was delivered to me.  The first thing I did was fdisk the drives to wipe out the
partitions (I did not create new partitions).  I then installed Fedora Core 3.  That worked
blissfully, and it created a single LVM for all three drives.  Nice.

Turn the page, and I have found that I want to use CentOS instead of Fedora on all my servers. 
Without wiping any partitions, I drop in the CentOS Server disk and reboot the box.  [do you sense
the suspense building up?]  On the partition screen, I noticed that it had discarded the LVM and
was using only HDD1 in the new layout.  The other 2 drives were marked as Free.  Huh.

Important note:  It's after midnight on Tuesday, and I'd been up since 6:30am.  I'm not rational.

I created ext3 partitions to consume all the drive space on HDD2 and HDD3.  Then I had an
ill-conceived stroke of bad genius.  I decided to install the OS onto HDD3 and use the other two
(relatively massive) drives for /var and /mailroot (as this machine will ultimately become a mail
storage box).  Here's where I screwed up:  I moved the /, /boot, and swap partitions to HDD3 and
marked /boot as a Primary Partition.

After selecting the packages I wanted, the installer formatted the partitions and copied the
packages.  When finished, it invited me to remove the installation media and reboot, which I did. 
Surprise, surprise, the machine would not boot.  Instead, I got dumped into a Grub> prompt.  I
rebooted again.  Same Grub> prompt.  I rebooted yet again with the same result.  I played with
Grub and was met with little more than "Error 15:  File not found" at every turn.

Huh.  I turned the box off and went to bed.

Next day (yesterday), I got home from work and gave it another whirl.  I decided that marking HDD3
with a Primary Partition was a bad idea.  I dropped in the CentOS Server disk again and
reinstalled.  This time, I left /boot, and swap on HDD1 and marked /boot on HDD1 as the Primary
Partition.  [here's where things get really interesting.]  But, I moved / to HDD3 and put /var on
HDD1 where / had been.  I also put /mailroot back onto HDD2.  Once again, I selected the same set
of packages and let it install.

After rebooting following the post-install cleanup, I'm completely hosed.  After the BIOS reports
finish and the boot process tries to take over, the machine hangs with only the word GRUB_ on the
screen (the _ is the blinking cursor).  Absolutely nothing I did would have any effect -- I could
not get past that GRUB hang.  I reinstalled CentOS again, this time leaving everything at defaults
(without even applying partitions to HDD2 or HDD3).  Nothing.  I tried replacing the GRUB boot
loader with LILO.  Won't take; still see GRUB on every boot.

Troubleshooting mode begins.  I drop in my old Windows 98 boot disk again and check the partitions
with fdisk.  WIERDNESS APPEARS!  For reasons beyond my understanding, HDD3 is now listed as HDD1,
the primary drive!!  The other two drives follow in the correct order.  Impossible, I think.  I
reboot and watch the BIOS report as it lists the drives.  Everything is in the correct order (as
listed above).  Huh.  A fluke?  Using the same boot disk, I drop into fdisk again.  STILL WRONG. 
HDD3 is acting as the master drive for the system (an MBR problem?)!

I drop the partitions on all drives and recreate Primary DOS (large) partitions on all three
drives.  I then try to mark the partition on what SHOULD be HDD1 as the Primary Partition.  No
take!  fdisk refused to set the Primary Partition because it wasn't on what it perceived as HDD1. 
Crap.  Next stage:  try a different OS to see if I can reset the Primary Partition back to the
proper drive.

I pull out my Windows NT4 Server disks and give them a whirl.  I had to break the drives up into
many 8Gig partitions before I could select a partition onto which to copy the files.  I spent the
time to do so, but when file copying was supposed to begin, the system threw an unrecoverable
error and bailed the install.  Crap.  Next OS.

I pulled out my Windows XP Professional disks and gave them a whirl.  I didn't have to make many
small partitions, but when it came time to start copying files, the installer threw a BSoD and
locked the system.  Crap.  Next OS.

I tried to reinstall Fedora Core 3.  Once again, the partition screen showed an LVM that included
all three drives.  Cool.  I accepted the partitions, but again tried to select LILO as the boot
loader (just so I'd see something other than GRUB to show me that all was good).  The installation
went forward and the packages were copied to the system.  I rebooted again at the end, and guess
what I saw.  GRUB_

I give up.  The system will not boot at all and I can't get rid of that damn GRUB.  The drives are
still suffering an identity crisis as to who is the Primary Master (in fdisk) and I've tried
everything I can think of to dump GRUB and get HDD1 to take over the Master Primary role.

How do I fix this?


=====
William Kimball, Jr.
"Programming is an art form that fights back!"  =)


		
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