New kernels do not work.

[Steve]

---- Tim <ignored_mailbox at yahoo.com.au> wrote: 
> On Sun, 2008-05-25 at 10:51 -0400, Steve wrote:
> > ...and I should have added in my note that after I edited grub.conf,
> > rebooted and I was still stuck with just GRUB on the screen, that I
> > re-installed grub from the DVD while in rescue mode and then rebooted
> > again. No luck - still just GRUB. At this point I think my next move
> > may be to do a complete re-install. <Sigh!>
> 
> Still sounds most likely that it's just GRUB that you have problems
> with, not the whole system.

OK, I have some progress to report but I'm still not sure exactly what is going on. I booted my rescue DVD and ran fdisk:

#fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sda: 250.0 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xd42ad42a

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1       29341   235681551    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2           29343       30387     8393962+   7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3           30388       30400      104422+  72  Unknown

Disk /dev/sdb: 250.0 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xb4b94613

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1   *           1          13      104391   83  Linux
/dev/sdb2              14       30401   244091610   8e  Linux LVM

Disk /dev/dm-0: 247.8 GB, 247833034752 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30130 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Disk /dev/dm-0 doesn't contain a valid partition table

Disk /dev/dm-1: 2080 MB, 2080374784 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 252 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x30307800

Disk /dev/dm-1 doesn't contain a valid partition table
You have new mail in /var/spool/mail/root

This is what I expected except for the last 2 partitions; /dev/dm-0 and /dev/dm-1. I don't really know what they are but I suspect they have something to do with RAID. This is an HP dc7700 and there is an HP_RECOVERY partition somewhere in the system so the /dev/dm stuff could be that? In the BIOS there is no option to change the boot order from one disk to the other, only between the HD and the CD/DVDso perhaps RAID is always turned on in the BIOS.

When I ran grub install before, I ran:
# grub-install /dev/sda1

which left me stuck with just GRUB on the screen. This time (after running grub interactivly and some other false starts) I ran:

# grub-install hd0

Now grub starts OK and I can boot into Fedora 9. X didn't start but I ran system-config-display which allowed me to start X on one of my dual monitors. That's one of many problems for another thread.

That's the good news. The bad news is that when I try to boot into Windows, it just starts grub again. I suspect that running grub-install /dev/sda1 put grub at the beginning of the 1st Windows partition and grub-install hd0 put grub in the MBR of the 1st disk. The grub in the MBR redirects to the grub in the 1st partition. Is there any way out of this beside re-installing Windows? I see that there is another thread "Problem in the boot of Windows XP with Grub" where another user has a similar problem.

Steve