Grub 0.93 failing to recognise whole disk FS

[Chris Webb]

I've been attempting to persuade grub to boot a linux kernel from a 'whole
disk filesystem', i.e. a disk on which there is no partition table but just
a large ext3 filesystem on the whole of (hd0) == /dev/hda.

This disk boots fine with LILO, but I'd like to use grub on this machine,
so I built grub from source (stock 0.93, configure options as default apart
from --prefix) and made a boot floppy from stage1+2 dded onto a floppy.

When I boot the machine from this floppy, and attempt to set the root fs,
grub fails to recognise the filesystem:

  grub> root (hd0)
   Filesystem type unknown, using whole disk

However, switching out the disk and replacing it with one set up with a
DOS partition table and a linux ext3fs in a primary partition works fine:

  grub> root (hd0,0)
   Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83

and I can specify a kernel and boot it fine from this point, so I guess
my grub build has all the required ext2fs support working.

I'd quite like to get grub working to boot this disk, and I'm happy to
dive in and fix this if it's an oversight or bug, but I thought I ask here
first in case this has already been addressed or in case there's some
config option already there that I've overlooked that handles this case.

Savannah is down at the moment so I can't check the grub cvs to see if
this has a fix for the problem, so apologies in advance for not having
done the obvious check there. I cannot see any answers in the archive
for bug-grub, perhaps unsurprisingly given that this is a relatively
unusual configuration.

Cheers,

Chris.
-- 
Chris Webb <address@hidden>
Arachsys Internet Services Ltd