Unable to make a boot for a brand new installation - How to make a Grub boot CD?

[Mikkel L. Ellertson]

renek7 wrote:
> Hi to all!
> 
> My problem is related to a "weird" installation that I've made.. 
> I'm working with a PC with 3 sata disks: the first two are in
> raid 1 mode with windows xp installed on them, while the third
> one is the one with the fedora 8 installed.
> 
> My booting problem is related to the fact of having a raid 1
> using intel matrix storage for the windows disks..
> As a matter of fact, since I do not know how linux will write my
 > raid disks, I avoided to install grub on the mbr of the first disk
> (since I do not want to mess up windows, at least for the moment..
> ;-)) and I installed it on a usb pen drive, thinking that it will
> work as a sort of boot floppy for my fedora (by the way, I checked
> and I can boot from a pen drive changing the priorities in the Bios).
> 
> Instead when I boot the computer it won't launch linux when the
> pen drive is connected (I double checked the priorities in the Bios
> and they were correct, in the sense that the pen drive was loaded
> first, then the cd-rom and lastly the hard drive).
> 
> So I guess that it is due to the fact that I cannot boot a linux
> installed in say, /dev/sdd2, from a pen drive that is recognized as
> /dev/sda.
> 
> Therefore I was wondering if someone can help me to create a boot
> grub cd from scratch to load the already installed fedora.
> 
> The only (additional) problem is that, since I cannot have access
> to fedora, I shall do it from windows...and I don't really know
> where to start... (I never done this before and even after having
> googled the problem I do not understand how to do it...)
> 
> I hope that someone can help me... because I really need my linux
> distro to start working...
> 
> Rene
> 
> 
A couple of questions:
  - Is /boot on the pen drive, or the on the hard drive?
  - Do you get the Grub menu, or hte booting Linux message, or does 
Grub fail before that?

I can not tell from the information you have given, but I suspect 
that the problem is that the BIOS drive mapping is different when 
you have the USB drive plugged in from what it was when you did hte 
install. When you boot from a CD/DVD, the internal drives are mapped 
first, and then things like the USB key. When you boot from the USB 
key, the BIOS maps that as the first drive. If /boot is on the 
internal drive, then Grub is looking for its files on the wrong BIOS 
drive. Because Grub uses the BIOS to load its files, this will cause 
Grub to fail. There are options to correct this when you are doing 
an expert install. I am not sure you see this with a normal install. 
You can also fix this by changing /boot/grub/device.map to match the 
drive mapping when you boot from the USB key, and re-installing Grub.

Mikkel
-- 

   Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons,
for thou art crunchy and taste good with Ketchup!

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