Guess what? Grub troubles...

[xenon]

Well, I ran (let's say walked) across the installation process, closely following the guide, and all went fine until Grub-time.
I installed Gentoo on my secondary master hard disk, XP is on primary master. Before doing so, I resized a previous NTFS partition, leaving raw diskspace at the beginning of the disk. Then I successfully partitioned this space with a large root and a small boot. Swap is on the other disk.
On to the problem.

[mrhodes]

not sure if this would help, but why don't oyu install grub on the primary drive?

Sure it will overwrite the MBR, but as long as you have a menu option to load windows it should come up.

also, what partition is the /boot partition on?

from your line in grub => root(hd1,2) that makes me think that it is on /dev/hdb3 ...

Is that the case? if so, no problem, but it not, you have to change that root line to point to the /boot partition.

Hope that helps,


Mike

[xenon]

Thanks for your interest.

I don't want to install grub on my primary master (thus overwriting the MBR) to avoid the danger of screwing my Windows install (and possibly data). Should I do as you suggest, and make a mistake, I'd be probably locked out from both XP and Gentoo - not something I'm looking for.

First of all, linux partitions are hdc3 and hdc4, since I have a cd burner on primary slave, and I made a mistake in my previous post: XP is on primary master, Gentoo on secondary master, not primary slave.
Right now, I'm starting to feel stupid.
In my understanding, Gentoo required 3 partitions: root, boot and swap.
I thought boot was some kind of backup, not to be used (not even mounted) unless something's wrong. So I pointed grub to my root partition. Is this my Oh So Big mistake that's causing troubles?
Well, I guess I can try while I wait for more hints.

Thanks again.

[rac]

[xenon]

Thanks. I'm afraid I don't really get along with Grub. Something wrong in using LILO instead? I think I'll restore my previous partition structure and restart from scratch, since after various retries and changes to the Grub setup, I still didn't manage to boot Gentoo (nor XP, by the way).

Is the dd command that I didn't use the first time in any way dangerous (or plain harmful) for preexistent NTFS partitions on the drive where it's called?

I like this place, thanks for your support.

[kraylus]

dd has nothing to with this situation. your problem lies with your telling the bios to boot the other hd when you previously told grub something different. linux will always know what hd is installed where, but grub doesn't. grub goes by what your bios tells it. so if you tell grub one thing, then change it on grub, you can't expect grub to work.

my advice:

tell your bios to boot the first hd first. that way your bios, grub and linux are all seeing the same thing.

next, don't be a baby install grub on your windows hd's mbr. it will work like a charm.

other option: set your bios to boot your second hd first and THEN give grub those settings. but tell grub that your second hd is actually the first. thus, instead of typing (hd1,2) you will type (hd0,2) because grub sees what your bios sees.

at least, this has been my experience. grub is a little bitch and you have to give it what it wants

good luck,

ryan
_________________
I used gentoo BEFORE it was cool.

[xenon]

Ok. I understand what you mean. Now I'm gonna try it. But I still think Grub is a bit too user-hostile, especially in its lack of consistency with the way linux itself sees and names drives.

On a related topic, I officially hate Partition Magic. It turns out that the bitch doesn't backup your MBR. Its rescue disks are totally unuseful. Now grub correctly detects partitions, linux mounts them, windows sees them, but PM says the whole disk is "Bad". Solution: screw PM!

Ok, enough swearing, gonna try what you suggested. Thanks.
Expect another post soon.

[xenon]

That was it! Now Gentoo boots correctly.

Thanks a lot and on towards the next problems!