Grub not booting with Sata on fresh Gentoo install

jxbryan · 03-08-2005, 05:02 PM

Ok I could really use some help.... I have never used linux before and I installed gentoo from a stage one last night and the first part of today.... Everything went really well with the installation no evers everything working like it was suppose to. Then I get to the part of the install when I must create a grub.conf file so that it will boot. This is where I have ran into a problem and need some help.

Here is my hardware setup as it pertains to booting,

One WD Raptor 10,000 RPM drive on a Promise 20378 RAID controller.

I had to load the module for the promise controller manually after booting from the live cd. however it then works just fine I have created the filesystem on it and everything. I compilied support the controller in my Kernel so I should not have any issues there.

WD Raptor is /dev/sda

Partitions are as follows,

/dev/sda1 = boot partition ext2fs mounted at /boot 32MB size
/dev/sda2=swap partition 512MB size
/dev/sda3=linux root partition. ext3fs Mounted on / Size= all space left.

I created a /boot/grub/grub.conf and tried to build one from scratch... I used sd0,0 for my location. This is where I need the help. I have my hard drive setup as listed above but cannot figure out what to put in the grub file... Can someone tell me based on the information here what my grub file should look like? This is the only drive I have and I am not duel booting or anything just tired of windows not working and am switching to linux. So when I did this and saved the file and installed it to the MBR and rebooted the machine it comes to a blank black screen with a blinking cursor.. Not grub information at all on the screen...

Please help me and tell what I need to do to fix this! (Let me know if you need more information then I have given)

Thanks,

~wd0mkr

jtshaw · 03-08-2005, 05:42 PM

Your grub.conf should look like this:

Code:

default 0
timeout 5

title Gentoo Linux
root (hd0,0)
kernel /<kernel image file name> root=/dev/sda3

Run grub-install /dev/sda and it will be installed on the mbr of this disk. You should see something like this as the output of that command:

Code:

Installation finished. No error reported.
This is the contents of the device map /boot/grub/device.map.
Check if this is correct or not. If any of the lines is incorrect,
fix it and re-run the script `grub-install'.

(fd0)   /dev/fd0
(hd0)   /dev/sda

Let me know if you still have problems.

jxbryan · 03-08-2005, 06:02 PM

Awesome I will try that when I get back home tonight... I just wanted to clarify something to make sure that what you said was correct.

Down below you put root (hd0,0) that is correct even for my S-ATA drive that is sda? Not that I dont think you are correct just want to make sure that we are on the same page.

Second I installed the kernel 2.6.9-gentoo-r14 as compaired to the one it lists in the installation manual. So after you compile the kernel and have to copy the new bzimage over to the boot directory I would use the full name of the file 2.6.9-gentoo-r14 right?

Thanks again for all of your help

~wd0mkr