Hi!
I have RH8.0 and Win98, win98 is on hda. I have RH8.0 on hdb. Everything is working fine, but I have to place the boot disk I made during installation in, and boot from BIOS, which is exactly what I want except I want to have RH8.0 boot from hdb, when I select that from the BIOS menu of bootable media. My RH8.0 is a new install, with all the errata from RHN installed. I did install grub on (hd1,0), I think, during install.
However, when I use the BIOS to boot from IDE1 (the RH disk), I get this:

GRUB

and then the system hangs. recover with a soft reboot. All very reproducable. The cursor stops one space away from the B in GRUB, if that helps.

I hope you want to see grub.conf....

# grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE: You do not have a /boot partition. This means that
# all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /, eg.
# root (hd1,0)
# kernel /boot/vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/hdb1
# initrd /boot/initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/hdb1
default=0
timeout=10
splashimage=(hd1,0)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz
title Red Hat Linux (2.4.20-19.8)
root (hd1,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.20-19.8 ro root=LABEL=/ hdd=ide-scsi
initrd /boot/initrd-2.4.20-19.8.img
title Red Hat Linux (2.4.18-14)
root (hd1,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.18-14 ro root=LABEL=/ hdd=ide-scsi
initrd /boot/initrd-2.4.18-14.img
title DOS
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1


and the current partitioning ( from fdisk )

Disk /dev/hda: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 4998 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 4998 40146403+ c Win95 FAT32 (LBA)


Disk /dev/hdb: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdb1 * 1 1275 10241406 83 Linux
/dev/hdb2 1276 1530 2048287+ 82 Linux swap
/dev/hdb3 1531 2805 10241437+ b Win95 FAT32
/dev/hdb4 2806 9729 55617030 83 Linux


So, I do have a desire not to mess with hda (windows) and to be able to boot (from bios) the RH8.0. Why do I hang on GRUB?

Thanks very much...

hi richardg,

I think I have a better idea here for you, but that's totally up to you whether you like it or not .

Since you're having 2 HDDs, I'd recommend you to use 1 HDD for both o/s and the second for the "linux" extension.

What I mean is the following:

You install Windows 98 on the first HDD after you have created a primary partition for it while you leave some space (probably more for linux than windows as I assume you're running Windows for some applications or games). After Windows 98 is installed, install Linux on the first HDD on the "unpartitioned" space.

During the setup of RH 8.0, make sure that you select hda to be automatically set up (unless u wanna do it by yourself).
At that point you can create 2 partitions for your 2nd HDD

2 partitions as the following:

hdb:
- /home
- /data

of course you can call the /data partition antyhing you like to call (examples: /mp3 or /backup or /stuff or whatever...you can even create more partitiions for each different aspect)

also install the boot manager (grub i think is what u prefer) using the MBR

now the best part is - with this setup, you can easily reinstall linux or even windows whenever you have to and you still get to keep all your user's information since it's all stored in the second HDD (/dev/hdb /home/...). pretty neat eh?

Now if you have questions on how to work together with windows and linux - windows 98 will be running on fat16 ...maybe even fat32 (i can't really remember) and u can mount it to the extend of writing/reading on it which allows u to share files easily.

So what do you think?

Let me know if I can be of any further assistance hehe...

Thanks very much for your thoughts, setting up disks are quite, what? personal? idiosyncratic? Anyway, I am already doing (planning to do) sort of what you suggest. I will make a linux partition on hd1 and a windows disk on hd2 and use linux and the large space on hd2 for backup (including other computers on the network... Afraid to mess with the working disk too much. Yea, yea if I screw it up i can always fdisk /mbr.
ANYWAY, I can refine my question a bit more.

I can boot linux from a floppy. I can boot from a CD i made (using mkbootdisk and mkisofs ). I made grub the installer on the second disk, with a grub.conf as above. booting from the second disk always hangs with a kernel panic, which I will post exactly in a minute. I made a GRUB disk, which also hangs.
SO. The question is, what GRUB commands will boot me?

OK, so I tried the grub command line(s) again and this boots me

root (hd1,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz ro root=/dev/hdb1 hdd=ide-scsi
boot

I will try putting that into grub.conf. The kernel arguments are suggested by the original grub.conf. Any suggestions?
Posted in the spirit of presenting the solution: sure hate seeing posts about problems similar to whatever I am working on, but then either end, or end with a "thanks, I got it". How? I will post step by step ( for newbies) making a bootable CD, if anyone cares. There are good sources out there.

OK, last post on this topic, for completeness sake.
If grub is installed on hd1, then it seems that (for grub purposes), that disk is hd0.
Thus, running grub from a floppy, use 'root (hd1,0)'
running grub from hd1 use 'root (hd0,0)'

Makes sense, I guess, that the bootloader considers the disk it finds itself on as hd0, and counts up from there. From linux, all the device.map and fstab seem fine and work ok.