I have read several threads regarding GRUB and SATA drives in this forum,
including the fine howto from aus9. I have tried a number of potential
solutions to no avail, so here is another one.

I installed Fedora Core 3 without incident on a ABIT IS7 MB. The IDE slots
are occupied by a zip drive (IDE Master) and a DVD-ROM and DVD-Writer
on IDE-2. The BIOS is configured with the SATA drives at IDE-3 and IDE-4
master's. When the system boots, GRUB runs but fails over to text mode.
If I set the root to (hd2,0) and enter

kernel vmlinuz-2.6.9-1.667 root=/dev/sda6
initrd initrd-2.6.9-1.667.img
boot

It boots fine. I tried setting the device.map file with

hd0 /dev/sda

and running "grub device-map=device.map" and then installing with
setup (hd0) and that didn't help. So I changed everything to hd2 and
modified the menu.lst and grub.conf file to:

root (hd2,0)
kernel vmlinuz-2.6.9-1.667 ro root=/dev/sda6 rhgb
initrd initrd-2.6.9-1.667.img

and tried again. Same result. However, I can now get the splashscreen
and a normal boot from text mode with "configfile (hd2,0)/grub.conf.

I'm stumped and suspect this is quite simple. Does anyone have any
ideas?

Thanks in advance.

gjh

1 are you using a sata boot card?

sata cable can not (imho) connect to an IDE connector.

2 You have some typos in your boot commands so I hope you corrected them for your menu.lst file

its kernel / (add the /)

3 I accept all praise so will try to help heh heh

4) when you log in next.......type su and grub in a terminal and just use the trouble-shooter to see what grub is thinking of your hardware

eg
su
grub
root (hd AND PRESS THE TAB KEY

or
su
grub
find /etc/fstab

5 I still think you will get there by correcting the typos and using root (hd2,0)

Thanks,
I actually have all the appropriate "/"'s and such. If I give the configfile command from text mode, it
boots without problem, so I assume that the grub.conf file is OK.

I did as you suggested and tested to see what Grub sees for devices. Before Stage 2 loading, its
sees (hd0) and (hd2), with (hd2) having the system on it. After a complete boot, it sees
(hd0) and (hd1), with (hd0) having the system on it. I don't know for sure how grub does its thing.
Is the device map stored in the boot sector or boot track? I have tried various combinations of
device maps and I have tried using both (hd2) and (hd0) and neither will get past stage1, so it obviously can't
find grub.conf.

If I set up grub.conf with (hd0) as the root, then from text mode grub setting the configfile fails because at
that time, grub sees the system on (hd2). It almost appears that grub can't find stage 2 because it won't
look beyond (hd1), or it is confused by there being a hole in the device map (there is no (hd1)).

I pulled out the zip drive and got another combination. After grub fails over to the command mode,
(hd1) is the system disk, and after booting manually, (hd0) is the system disk. If I set up grub.conf
for (hd1), it still fails. This is getting pretty silly and I know that SUSE, for example, can boot off of
a SATA drive, so I'm just going to have to keep experimenting.

If you have any ideas, I would love to hear them, but I'm not sure its worth investing a lot of time. If the
Fedora people aren't interested in making it work I'll try some other distro or just boot manually.

Thanks,
gjh

oops I did not check your device.map info very well

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...hreadid=277615

mentions my device.map file

2 and that poster may have an issue with scsi emulation needing a kernel append, altho at this unconfirmed, but you could try it.

3 the other thing you can do is put unique files on each storage drive and then use the find command at grub command to see what it is seeing before kernel installed and compare to full boot....if possible

4 if it is too much trouble, I agree so humbly suggest you consider that I installed Mdk on to a Sata no probs