Hello:

My (Alienware) PC BIOS supports booting from USB devices,
so I decided to load FC5 on one of my 300GB Seagate USB
attached disks.

I successfully did so, but I can't get GRUB to work right.

Problem description:

/dev/sda (internal SATA - Windows XP)
/dev/sdb (internal SATA - for backups)

/dev/sdc (external USB - Fedora Core 5)
/dev/sdc1 (hd2,0) = /boot
/dev/sdc2 (hd2,1) = /
/dev/sdc3 (hd2,2) = swap

During the install, I specified that "stage1" of GRUB
to be put on the first sector of /dev/sdc1 (and it was).

But when I boot the PC using the USB device, all I get is:

GRUB

(Literally, that's all I see). This tells me that "stage1"
cannot find "stage2" (I think). So I booted to rescue
mode off a CD-ROM and used grub(8) and/or grub-install(8)
in various ways to modify the "stage1" grub.

For example:

root# mount -t ext3 -o rw /dev/sdc1 /boot
root# grub-install --root-directory=/boot /dev/sdc1
root# umount /boot

root# grub
install (hd2,0)/boot/grub/stage1 d (hd2) \
(hd2,0)/boot/grub/stage2 p (hd2,0)/boot/grub/menu.lst

I also tried the above install grub command by omitting
the '/boot' part in various parts of the command.

HELP

I did my homework and try what I found all over. But no
success here.

Basically here is what I need:

- I have FC5 installed on the device slices shown above.
- I can select to boot off that device when I turn on my PC.
- I have a Knoppix and FC5 recue CD's that I can boot off
of the fix my GRUB issues... now...

Tell me what commands to run (or re-run correctly)
the get the system to boot. (Note: I don't want nor
need to mess with the MBR on /dev/sda, which holds
Windows XP, because my PC can boot USB devices; in this
case it is /dev/sdc).

BTW... the 'menu.lst' has an entry for Windows XP
and one for the FC5 (default is FC5).

Thanks in advance.

N Milton
nmvega@ComputingArchitects.Com

I'm getting the same thing for my Zip drive, and found this. Have you found anything helpful?