I don't know the answer and I cannot find it written in stone anywhere, so I thought I would ask.

what does the hd number tags in GRUB refer to? does it refer to the /boot or the partition that should be booted? I have always assumed it refers to where the kernel and initrd is. so when using a single boot partition which is /dev/sda1 it should always be set to hd0,0. is this true?

the question arose again since I am using a single boot for multiple distributions and have a kernel panic with a newly compiled 3.1.6 with noinitrd and a tight minimu selection kernel config.

can someone explain ad write in stone how hd0,0 tags in grub works for single /boot partition and also multi /boot on several partitions and perhaps compare what it looks like?


thanks and have a great one.

I presume you are referring to the original grub. If so, yes /dev/sda1 is (hd0,0) - described in the doco.
Single system or multi-boot makes no difference if using the same partition for /boot for all.

If you are getting a kernel panic, you probably shouldn't be blaming the boot-loader - if the kernel has started, grub has done its job.

ok. so regardless of the partition you have the distro on, as long as /boot is /dev/sda1 it is always (hd0,0).

panic was from me forgetting to include SCSI in the kernel. hah. then I had an issue where kernel mounted the system as read only and refused to mount it as read write.

this was due to kernel error due to lack of huge file support. i guess I need that for ext4. should be fine when I reboot now hopefully.

thanks!