Re: [gentoo-user] Grub on a new disk

[Florian Philipp <lists@f_philipp.fastmail.net>]

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On Sat, 5 Jul 2008 15:06:31 +0100
Mick <michaelkintzios@gmail.com> wrote:

> > I've already changed the BIOS boot order to look at /dev/hdd's MBR
> > first but that didn't help.
> 
> Right, have you checked your device.map to see if there's anything
> untoward in there?
>

(fd0)   /dev/fd0
(hd0)   /dev/hda
(hd1)   /dev/hdb
(hd2)   /dev/hdd

Looks clean to me.
 
> > Now the system boots correctly but it takes ages (>10sec) to come 
> > from "Grub loading Stage1.5" to "Grub loading, please wait..."
> 
> Stage1.5 contains the filesystem driver which will allow GRUB to be
> able to read the fs of hdd on which the /boot/grub/stage2 file is
> stored.  Since 10 seconds to read a relatively small file is rather
> excessive, could it be a drive cable/ribbon fault?
> 

And then the system works flawlessly? I don't think so. Badblocks
doesn't report anything on /dev/hdd1 right now and I've checked the rest
of the disk before I moved the system there.

> > and then another 10sec or more to open the menu.
> 
> Ditto.  If it were that the GRUB code in the bootloader went into a
> loop or something, scanning all drives, then by this step it would
> not need to probe or access any other device.  The fact that it takes
> so long points towards a hardware rather than a configuration issue.
> Other than that could it be a fs corruption problem?  </clutching at
> straws>

e2fsck -f /dev/hdd1 shows no problem. dd can read the MBR of all disks
easily.

> 
> Unless better ideas are proposed you may want to remerge grub, then
> re-install it manually in the first disk MBR using a grub > prompt
> (as per the handbook) and point it's root to your hdd disk.

Reemerged grub, installed it with grub-install into /dev/hdd and (just
to be sure) /dev/hdd1, let the BIOS boot from /dev/hdd - didn't help.

Then I've installed grub into hda's MBR. Then something odd happened:
Stage1.5 loads quiet fast but then Grub hangs once again of ~20sec
with: "Grub loading, please wait ..."

Since that is the moment when Grub accesses /dev/hdd for the first
time, I think it could really be a problem with the hard disk, however,
one that doesn't affect anything else. Maybe an automatic SMART
self-test at boot-up? I'll investigate and as a workaround I'll get an
SD-card or cheap USB-stick for Grub, since - unfortunately - the kernel
is too big to fit on a floppy.

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