Grub Grief aGain

[Rashkae]

Dave Howorth wrote:

> 
> Fortunately, I can use ls to get enough information.
> 
> ls (hd1,1) tells me that the partition is labelled pad1 (which is a name
> I use for small empty partitions at the front of disks containing LVM
> partitions)
> 
> ls (hd2,1) tells me that the partition is labelled opensuse-11.2 (you
> can guess what that is). It claims (by-id) that the disk is a Seagate.
> It also says the UUID is dcfdbc....
> 
> So at least I now know why it isn't booting openSUSE. The next question
> is how to fix it.
> 
> Now I *know* that the opensuse partition is on a WD disk, so it seems to
> me that something within grub is significantly broken.

It makes no such claim.  There is no guaranteed that the order of 
devices detected by Suse (sda sdb etc) will be the same as detected by 
the bios (hd1 hd2, etc.  Since you aren't using search to find the 
correct hd device, and you have more than 2 hard drives, the only way to 
be sure you have the right hd is trial and error.  When you are at the 
boot menu, you can edit the Open Suse entry, (press 'e' key) I believe, 
and try changing the hd1,1 to hd2,1, and see if OpenSuse boots.  If that 
works, then update your device map so (hd2) entry points to the correct 
drive.

Ultimately, however, there are only two ways to be make booting robust 
on such a system.  The correct way is to find out why search doesn't 
work on your system (there might be some device that's causing it to 
choke.  I know I had issues with 1 specific pci io controller, for 
example).  The other is to put your boot partitions on the first hard 
drive configured to be your boot device that can always be relied upon 
to be identified as hd0 by the bios.