Why do I struggle with this with every time I do a fresh install...

I can't get grub to boot either of my OS's installed.

Here is my physical setup. I have Windows XP installed in hda1, and SuSE 10.2 boot and root at hda6. Grub, on the other hand, is installed on the secondary hard drive's MBR so I can just change which drive I want to boot to if I want SuSE to disappear for whatever reason (if I go away, people do stupid things when given a command prompt)

So because grub is installed on the MBR of the SECOND hard drive, I believe we assume hda1 = (1,0) instead of the normal (0,0) and hda6 = (1,5). This is what my grub.conf looks like

title Windows XP
rootnoverify (1,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1

title SuSE Linux 10.2
root (1,5)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda6

Using this configuration, nothing boots. Any ideas? I know there are a thousand messages like this on the forums, but they never seem to help my exact problem.
At one time, I was able to fiddle with the SuSE boot section and was able to get it to START to boot, but had a kernel panic a few seconds into the boot. Of course, I can't remember exactly what the message was, and I am about to head to bed since I am falling asleep while typing this.

I think it doesn't matter on which harddisk GRUB is on, but which harddisk is set as primary and which secondary. I would naturally think the primary harddisk is called hda (possibly sda if sata), secondary hdb (possibly sdb if sata) etc. so primary hd would be referred to as (0,?) and secondary (1,?) and so on. Having GRUB on the second (i.e. secondary, slave, if I understood you right) harddisk doesn't make it primary one and vice versa.

If you have tried using (0,?) for primary disk and (1,?) for secondary and it still doesn't work, then what kind of error does GRUB give you, does GRUB give you an error at all or doesn't it even show up? I think your system looks for a bootloader on the primary disk's MBR first, and not necessarily on the 2nd at all unless you've configured it to do so. So in this case, if GRUB is on the secondary harddisk, you would still need something in the first disk's MBR to tell (chainload?) your system that there's a bootloader on the 2nd harddisk that should be used.

Install grub on the main drive, then edit your menu.lst file and change the boot order there.

This may be one of those "back to basics" things:

The drive numbering is based on what the BIOS is told--and passes on the the rest of the system.
If you have grub in the mbr of the "secondary" drive, then--to use it--you must switch the boot order in the bios setup so that the secondary boots first. It is then hda, and Windows and Linux are now on hdb. Since Windows is no longer on the first drive, it's entry in menu.lst must now include the map command, i.e.:
map (hd0)(hd1)
map (hd1)(hd0)

With Linux now on hdb6, the correct entry would be:
title SuSE Linux 10.2
root (hd1,5) (I don't know if the missing "hd" in your version is significant)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hdb6

When the primary drive is set to boot as #1 (hda), then how are you booting the system? I'm guessing that you still have the Windows boot code there. If so, Windows should boot--and the question is how you get to SUSE.

That is exactly what I have happening now. I have the BIOS booting to the secondary drive, where grub is installed. I am thinking of just saying "screw it" and install it on the primary drive, but I have it this way so all I have to to do is change which hard drive the BIOS boots to, and it will completely ignore any Linux distro on it and boot straight to Windows.

The error I get when I am booting to SuSE when referring to /dev/hda6 as (1,0) is a kernel panic a few seconds into boot. When I refer to /dev/hda6 as (0,0), it just says "File not found". So it DOES appear to refer to the drive that grub is installed on as the primary, and I remember having this problem before. But for simplicity sake, I think I am just gonna do it the right way.

Either way you're going to have to manually choose which op/sys to boot (personally don't see the point of going in and out of your bios) so you may as well put grub on the main drive, and just edit the menu.lst file and put the one you want as the default op/sys to boot first.

I went to reinstall SuSE to see where the problem happened instead of just fixing it and forgetting it. Apparently, even with the BIOS seeing the drive with the OS's on it as primary (hda), the installer automatically mapped hda1 as (1,0) and hdb1 as (0,0). So I changed the devices.map file and made the respective canges in menu.lst, then had it boot to the /dev/hda6 partition, and now it worked fine. I wonder what caused the SuSE installer to do something so strange.

Just a suggestion

The end connector of a IDE cable is for the primary (master) drive, the connector in between the "mobo" and "end" connector is for the secondary (slave) drive. Sounds to me like you have the ribbon connectors plugged into the wrong drives in respect to "master & slave".

That would be true if you are using the cable select jumper setting. I have the drives set to master/slave using jumpers (they are also hooked up with the end of the cable going to master and the middle going to slave). Also, it does recognize hda and hdb as being the correct drives, but GRUB decides to map each of them wrong.

Strange indeed!

My solution is my boot manager, I only trouble shoot other peeps boot problems using bootitng, I don't sweat with my multi-boot which can have 100+ OS's on nothin' but primary partitions.

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/

EDIT: Expect some "comments".
SECOND EDIT: Lots of grub bitches here!