Grub Help!

[munky]

I got a new comp (by new a p2 400mhz..its free shutup!) I have 2 drives in my server. A 15 which holds everything and a 40 which i had another os for a while. The 40 gig has the boot record right now. The master (hda1 which is the 15) has grub ready, I just need to get it as the mbr b/c I wanna remove the 40 and use it on the new comp. MY root parition is hda3, my boot partition is hda1. What should I do?

[samwichse]

What shouldn't ouy doo?

[munky]

Well, right now the boot record is on the 2nd drive. IF I take it out, I get a "grub error". I want the first drive to run w/o the second!

[the jester]

so the 40 gig (to be removed) is your /dev/hda or in grub-speak (hd0) and the boot is on (hd0,0)

from a CLI you need to re-run the grub set-up

grub
root (hd1,0)
setup (hd1)
quit

(hd1,0) being the first partition on the second drive (/dev/hdb1)

however, this is all going to change when you whip out the 40g drive, because then you technically only have a /dev/hda

what I would do is back up the boot config from the 40g as well as fstab for reference
next pull the 40g drive
use a linux install disc to get to a chrooted prompt
reconfigure grub and fstab based on your new hardware config i.e.
grub
root (hd0,0)
setup (hd0)
quit

make sure the 15G has a /boot and stick your kernel and grub.conf in there - make sure the grub.conf is pointing at the right (hd) and you should be good

HTH

[nukes]

If you're boot partition (where GRUB is installed) is on the second drive, you need to move it to the first as the MBR can only really serve to bootstrap the system and point it to the partition where stage 2 is installed as it only consists of like 512 bytes or so. If you remove that drive, it won't work as half of grub is missing (including your config file)
It is possible to set grub up to run off a FAT partition (if thats whats on your first drive) If you really want something where it can run without the second drive, why not try XOSL (if you have a FAT/FAT32 partition on the first drive that is)
www.xosl.org

[the jester]

I see that my Saturday night severely impaired my ability to give good advice

[nukes]

Wait. I think I got it mixed up. Is the 15 the master at the moment and the 40 the slave or on the other channel?
If that's the case, jester's advice will do it.

[munky]

the 15 is the master, and btw i installed the 15 first with gentoo and then i installed the 40 with clark connect. The 15 still has its grub.conf. So...btw jester your respons confused me

[the jester]

my apologies

what I would do is

1. get a gentoo install disc

2. boot the install disc and follow the gentoo instructions aside from partitioning all the way up to getting to a chroot shell

3. skip to the grub configuration instructions

4. set up grub on your 15G

5. edit your grub.conf (not forgetting the symlink to menu.lst)

6. remove references to the 40G drive from /etc/fstab

and pull the 40G before you do step 1

[KraM]

btw, you don't need to chroot to install the grub mbr, you can do it straight from the gentoo cd just after it's finished booting.