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Imagepunkwalrus wrote in Imagelinux

Problems with GRUB, CentOS

On every machine I have had, GRUB installs have never had problems, thus my GRUB-fu is weak Smile.

I have this odd Compaq machine that has a serious problem with GRUB. I keep thinking it's something to do with the MBR on this chipset, but what do I know? LILO works fine, like I can install Slackware and Gentoo on this box with LILO just fine. But sadly, I can't use LILO with CentOS, Fedora, etc Frown.

The drive is a vanilla 20gb IDE, /dev/hda. The install is a basic server setup. No errors during installs reported, ever. The install is also vanilla with ext3 /boot, swap, and /. But upon boot, it hangs at:

"GRUB Loading stage 2..."


I did a "linux rescue" from the CentOS CD, mounted /mnt/sysimage. From there I did:
chroot /mnt/sysimage
/sbin/grub
root (hd0,0)
setup (hd0)

No errors reported. I rebooted, and now I am at this line:
GRUB Loading stage 1.5...
Grub loading, Please Wait...

[then hangs, ctl+alt+delete does nothing]

So I tried: grub-install /dev/hda and unsurprisingly, that didn't change anything.

I am stumped. This only happens on this box, and I know GRUB *can* be on this box, because it originally came with RH9 (pre-installed from the factory) on it before I swapped to a different hard drive (and yes, I have tried multiple hard drives, made sure they were fine, same problem).

Output of fdisk -l
Disk /dev/hda: 20.4 GB, 20404101120 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 2480 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1   *           1           4       32098+  83  Linux
/dev/hda2               5        2415    19366357+  83  Linux
/dev/hda3            2416        2480      522112+  82  Linux swap

My grub.conf:
# grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE:  You have a /boot partition.  This means that
#          all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /boot/, eg.
#          root (hd0,0)
#          kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/hda2
#          initrd /initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/hda
default=0
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title CentOS_ServerCD (2.6.9-42.EL)
	root (hd0,0)
	kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.9-42.EL ro root=LABEL=/
	initrd /initrd-2.6.9-42.EL.img


My relevant lspci -v output
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82845G/GL[Brookdale-G]/GE/PE DRAM Controller/Host-Hub Interface (rev 01)
	Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company: Unknown device 1298
	Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0
	Memory at e0000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=64M]
	Capabilities: [e4] Vendor Specific Information

[...]

00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801DB (ICH4) IDE Controller (rev 01) (prog-if 8a [Master SecP PriP])
	Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company: Unknown device 1298
	Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0, IRQ 185
	I/O ports at 
	I/O ports at 
	I/O ports at 
	I/O ports at 
	I/O ports at fc00 [size=16]
	Memory at 10000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=1K]