[olug] grub doesn't show up

[Ryan O'Rourke]

On Fri, 2003-04-11 at 09:55, Andrew Holm-Hansen wrote:
> Ryan O'Rourke wrote:
> >I just installed RH 8.0 but when I try to boot the machine I just get
> >the word "GRUB" with a flashing cursor in the upper left-hand corner of
> >my screen where the Grub splash screen and options should be. 

> Maybe try grubconf? 
> http://sourceforge.net/projects/grubconf/


Thanks for the suggestion! 
Grubconf didn't actually work, but it gave me a clue to pursue. When
trying to run grubconf I was getting the error message "Could not find
splash image device, given (hd1,1)/grub/splash.xpm.gz" so I began to
follow up on that. One thing led to another and I found an FAQ
concerning GRUB hanging when accessing SCSI drives and especially with
certain SCSI bios.  The FAQ specifically states GRUB will not work with
Adaptec AIC-7880 -- luckily I have Adaptec AIC-7890 so I was able to
disable INT13 extension.
 http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/grub-faq.en.html#q14

After doing so I still couldn't get a GRUB splash screen and GRUB would
still hang on boot. So I created a boot floppy that includes the GRUB
menu interface like so:

mke2fs /dev/fd0
mount /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy
mkdir -p /mnt/floppy/boot/grub
cd /boot/grub
cp device.map grub.conf menu.lst splash.xpm.gz stage1 stage2 \
/mnt/floppy/boot/grub
umount /dev/fd0

grub --batch --device-map=/dev/null <<EOF
device (fd0) /dev/fd0
root (fd0)
setup (fd0)
quit
EOF

reboot

Although there is no fancy splash screen, GRUB now boots from the floppy
disk and gives me the standard boot options. I can live with that.
http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/grub-faq.en.html#q4


-- Ryan