How to recover Fedora Core 5?

[Matthew Saltzman]

On Fri, 29 Sep 2006, Vinicius wrote:

> Hello,
>
> My original grub.conf uses hd0,5 as device and /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 
> as root.
>
> The grub command "setup (hd0)" doesn't work.
>
> When I run "/sbin/grub-install hd0,5" or "/sbin/grub-install
> /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00", the return is "The file /boot/grub/stage1 not
> read correctly". And the floppy disk led turns on and I hear the head moving.

I haven't seen the earlier part of this thread, so maybe I've missed 
something, but hd0,5 looks like a logical partition inside the extended 
partition and /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 is an LVM logical volume.  I'm 
pretty sure that grub needs to live in the MBR or the boot record of a 
primary partition.  I've been told that recent grubs can have /boot be a 
logical partition, but have not verified that.  grub cannot live in or 
boot from an LVM volume.  The root file system (not /boot) can be a 
logical volume.

I have /boot as a small primary partition (/dev/hda3 or (hd0,2)).  Grub 
itself is installed in the boot record of that partition, which I made the 
active boot partition using fdisk.  My / filesystem is in 
/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00.  Thus the grub stanza reads

title Fedora Core (2.6.17-1.2187_FC5)
         root (hd0,2)
         kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.17-1.2187_FC5 ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 rhgb quiet
         initrd /initrd-2.6.17-1.2187_FC5.img

I haven't had to do it by hand, but I think that would be

 	grub-install /dev/hda3

or

 	grub-install (hd0,2)

with no options.  There's a comment in grub.conf to the effect that, 
because I have a /boot partition, all paths are relative to /boot.

>
> Thanks for your time,
> Vinicius.
>
>
>

-- 
 		Matthew Saltzman

Clemson University Math Sciences
mjs AT clemson DOT edu
http://www.math.clemson.edu/~mjs