[buug] GRUB dumb grub

[Michael Paoli]

A few random hints/points that jump to mind, that might possibly point or
help point to the answer.  One exceedingly annoying thing I've run into
with Red Hat (and Fedora/anaconda may share in the mess), is when installing
Red Hat on a system that has access to multiple drives (e.g. local hard drive
and SAN drive(s)), the installation process can get very screwed up around the
point where it gets to installing and configuring grub, and, e.g., want to
install grub on the wrong drive!  So, ... I'd be highly suspicious of Red
Hat (and quite possibly also Fedora/anaconda) grub installation process
(short of doing most all the grub stuff manually) giving a rather to quite
messed up grub configuration/installation.  Doing all the grub stuff manually
should work suitably.  (<Red Hat Rant>
e.g. when installing Red Hat on local hard drive, when system also has
access to SAN drives, but should not be touching data on the SAN drives at
all through the installation process ... when it gets to the point of
installing grub in the installation process, Red Hat wanted to install
grub on the first SAN drive (which would've probably hopelessly corrupted
its data, as the filesystem was a type not at all understood by grub),
and it offered no alternative installation location in the installation
process (I ended up blocking the host's access to the SAN and repeating
the installation ... then, and only then, would it offer to install grub
on the correct drive - in both cases, it didn't offer a choice of target
drives for the grub installation))
</Red Hat Rant>)

So, ... anyway, it may be quite prudent to pour over the grub installation/
configuration with a fine tooth comb, and don't trust what Fedora/anaconda
may have done.

Quoting Walt Schlender:

> I've enjoyed the past couple of meetings. And, I'm still having trouble
> with
> GRUB. Here's what my hardware configuration looks like:

> # grub.conf generated by anaconda
> title Fedora Core (2.6.11-1.1369_FC4smp)
> All I get when I boot is:
> GRUB and then a bunch of random characters that are impossible to type.

> By the way, there is no fd0, but I don't think that should matter should
> it?

It may suffice that an enabled floppy controller exists (or something that
can emulate one, such as USB boot support) for grub to show an fd0.

Anyway, I may poke around my boot configurations (and what I can see of
yours), and come up with some more useful information ... or perhaps
you'll get it all figured out and working before that (with or without
other folks also providing more useful information).  Also, in addition
to the configuration file, there are all the issues of what grub and
grub related data has (and/or hasn't) been written where, and how.
That's a bit of the messier part to get it set up right initially, ...
but once that's done it's much easier to maintain (and much less prone
to error) than LILO.