Odd interaction between GRUB and LVM2 [SOLVED]

[depontius]

This system was installed using gentoo-dev-sources-2.6.9-r?, with root and swap on /dev/hda, and usr, home, var on lvm2, which is also on /dev/hda. There are symlinks for tmp and opt to put them into var and usr, respectively. In addition, after bringup I converted to udev from devfs. I've been using it happily for some number of weeks.

Recently it was time to update to 2.6.10-r4, and that got into trouble. It couldn't find its lvm2 partitions, so the boot failed miserably. I found that I could vgscan and vgchange, then run "rc boot" and "rc default" and the system would come up just fine. I played around, rebuilding the kernel, and trying the (unsuccessful) --lvm2 option with genkernel, and nothing worked.

Some time in this process, I noticed that I have 4 boot options under grub:
Windows
Gentoo
Gentoo=new
Gentoo-devfs
The "Gentoo=new" was supposed to be "Gentoo-new" to boot 2.6.10-r4, but a slipped finger put an "=" instead of the "-", but it's only a title, so that shouldn't matter. BTW, the other 2 Gentoo options used the old 2.6.9-r? kernel.

But that little "=" was what killed me. Last night, after more experiments, just for cleanliness I changed the "=" to "-". The system booted just fine, and IIRC, that was the only change on that boot. There isn't documentation of this on the Grub site, but that's what happened.

Stranger than truth.
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