Detecting GRUB stage1 and locating stage2

[Jeff Tickle]

Hello GRUB folks,

While trying to figure out a recent failure in the Ubuntu installer on a buddy's computer, I found that it would be useful to have a utility that could look at the MBR of a specified block device, determine if it is looking at GRUBv1 or GRUBv2 or something else, and tell me where stage1 thinks its stage2 is located, device and path.

Is there already a utility that does this?  I googled a good bit and found nothing.  If not, I'm not afraid of playing with a little C and looking at block devices.  Does anyone have a clue where I might start?

I found the string '/boot/grub' looking at my own /dev/hda at address 0x41c, but I couldn't find anything that looked like a device such as (hd0,msdos0) or /dev/sda1 or anything like that.  If anyone here could point me in the right direction, I'd be glad to make this utility.

-Jeff