Fedora Grub boots old RedHat 7.3 drive

[David Eduardo Gomez Noguera]

On Tue, 2003-12-30 at 08:19, Jeff Anderson wrote:
> I have been running RedHat 7.3 for some time.  I
> recently installed Fedora on a new hard drive. 
> Everything works great until I stick the old 7.3 boot
> drive back into the box.
> 
> Regardless of where the drive is (hdc, hdd, etc) I get
> the Fedora GRUB screen at boot.  Once the system
> starts booting, it uses the old 7.3 drive instead of
> the Fedora drive.
> 
> If I disconnect the 7.3 drive, Fedora boots and
> everything is fine again.  I need to be able to boot
> Fedora correctly and mount the old 7.3 drive to copy
> files.
> 
> I would appreciate some ideas on what the problem is
> and how to fix it.  
> 
> Here is details about my configuration and what I have
> tried:
> 
> -- The BIOS and the only boot hard disk is the Fedora
> disc.
> -- The BIOS shows each drive in the proper place (i.e.
> the Fedora drive is the primary on the first IDE
> channel.  
> -- When the boot loader starts it shows the Fedora
> boot stuff from hda.
> -- When the actual boot process starts, it always uses
> the 7.3 drive unless it is disconnected.  In that case
> it boots from the Fedora drive.
> 
> Here is the grub.conf from the Fedora drive (hda):
> 
> ---------------------------------
> 
> # grub.conf generated by anaconda
> #
> # Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making
> changes to this file
> # NOTICE:  You do not have a /boot partition.  This
> means that
> #          all kernel and initrd paths are relative to
> /, eg.
> #          root (hd0,0)
> #          kernel /boot/vmlinuz-version ro
> root=/dev/hda1
> #          initrd /boot/initrd-version.img
> #boot=/dev/hda
> default=0
> timeout=10
> splashimage=(hd0,0)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz
> password --md5 $1$iJ9LuhFJ$NH1513oi/K4fo79VPNpgl0
> title Fedora Core (2.4.22-1.2135.nptl)
>         root (hd0,0)
>         kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.22-1.2135.nptl ro
> root=LABEL=/ rhgb
>         initrd /boot/initrd-2.4.22-1.2135.nptl.img
> title Fedora Core (2.4.22-1.2115.nptl)
>         root (hd0,0)
>         kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.22-1.2115.nptl ro
> root=LABEL=/ rhgb
>         initrd /boot/initrd-2.4.22-1.2115.nptl.img
> ----------------------------------
> 
> HERE is the grub.conf from the old 7.3 drive:
> 
> ----------------------------------
> # grub.conf generated by anaconda
> #
> # Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making
> changes to this file
> # NOTICE:  You do not have a /boot partition.  This
> means that
> #          all kernel and initrd paths are relative to
> /, eg.
> #          root (hd0,0)
> #          kernel /boot/vmlinuz-version ro
> root=/dev/hda1
> #          initrd /boot/initrd-version.img
> #boot=/dev/hda
> default=0
> timeout=10
> splashimage=(hd0,0)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz
> title Red Hat Linux (2.4.20-24.7)
>         root (hd0,0)
>         kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.20-24.7 ro
> root=/dev/hda1
>         initrd /boot/initrd-2.4.20-24.7.img
> ----------------------------------
The problem is the LABEL thingy
I am betting your partitions on redhat 7.3's hard disk had also been
labeled.
Change your "fedora grub.con" file to name partitions explicitly (on the
kernel line).
Also, do the same for your /etc/fstab on your fedora system, as that may
cause problems too.

Hope that fixes your problem.

PS. The grub.conf file on your redhat 7.3 system is not being read