[clue-tech] FC4 grub woes

[j.cann at comcast.net]

This is my second upgrade to FC4 from Red Hat 9.  The first one was uneventful.  When I tried another machine tonight, grub was hanging on reboot.  
I tried a grub-install /dev/hda from rescue mode, but that didn't work.
I finally did a grub-install --recheck /dev/hda which took quite a while to complete.  When I rebooted, I finally saw the grub boot screen.  
When I choose the kernel to boot, I received an 'error 17' which the grub manual indicates that grub cannot recognize a filesystem format.
This is weird since this box has only been linux and the partitions are either swap or ext3.  The fdisk information seems to be in order.  Note that since I choose upgrade during the FC4 installation, it did not (or was not supposed to) change my partition table and / or format the filesystems.  I don't think the installer changed the fdisk info - it looks the same as before.
fdisk -l : (abbreviated)
Device     Boot  Id   System
/dev/hda1  *     83   Linux
/dev/hda2        5    Extended
/dev/hda5        82   Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/hda6        83   Linux
/dev/hda7        83   Linux
/dev/hda8        83   Linux
device.map
(fd0) /dev/fd0  # note I have no floppy drive
(hd0) /dev/hda
grub.conf
#boot = /dev/hda
default=0
timeout=10
title Fedora Core (2.6.11-1.1369_FC4)
    root (hd0,1)
I don't know grub, but reading the manual I am confused as to why the grub-install set the root to (hd0,1).  Since my boot partition is /dev/hda1, shouldn't this be (hd0,0)?
It's also interesting that the rescue option can load my filesystems just fine.
>From rescue mode, I did a chroot /mnt/sysimage and then changed the /boot/grub/grub.conf root (hd0,1) to root (hd0,0) and ran grub-install /dev/hda
I check top from another TTY and there is no CPU time for the grub-install command (top reports it in Sleeping status) and my drive does not indicate any accesses.  I think it basically hangs.
So, I'm stumped and looking for suggestions.
Thanks
Jeff
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