"Error 21" problem/user error with GRUB 0.97

[Ian Kirk]

Hi,

Having just installed FC6 on an upgraded server[1], I found I was unable
to boot using GRUB as I was getting Error 21 issues.

I downloaded and compiled the latest versio of LILO, which worked fine.
This obviously confused me slightly.

I'm curious if anyone else has experienced similar issues and has any
workarounds?

Is it possible, for example, to load stage2 of GRUB from LILO which
appears to be able to cope with my setup.

I wish to use GRUB instead of LILO so I can experiment with Xen, which
dosen't work with LILO (Multiboot issues)

Kind regards,
Ian




[1] Technical & config information:

/dev/sda & /dev/sdb are two SATA2 drives connected to a JMicron JMB363
SATA/RAID controller. I'm running this in AHCI mode, no RAID.

Each disk has a single partition /dev/sda1 & /dev/sda2 (both are active
and type=fd, CHS etc is all the same)

The motherboard is a ASUS M2V-MX which has 2 PATA, 2 SATA (via), 2 SATA
(JMicron) channels. The non-JMicron channels are disabled.

GRUB appears to install OK - not i'm not currently using the RAID for GRUB
so drive #2 has a working LILO on it.

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

grub> setup (hd0)
 Checking if "/boot/grub/stage1" exists... yes
 Checking if "/boot/grub/stage2" exists... yes
 Checking if "/boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5" exists... yes
 Running "embed /boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5 (hd0)"...  15 sectors are embedded. 
succeeded
 Running "install /boot/grub/stage1 (hd0) (hd0)1+15 p (hd0,0)/boot/grub/stage2
/boot/grub/grub.conf"... succeeded
Done.

device.map:
(hd0)   /dev/sda
(hd1)   /dev/sdb


The working lilo.conf:

boot=/dev/md4
prompt
timeout=60
lba32
raid-extra-boot=mbr
nodevcache
default = vmlinuz

image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.20-1.2962.fc6
        label   =       vmlinuz
        initrd  =       /boot/initrd-2.6.20-1.2962.fc6.img
        literal =       "root=/dev/md4 read-only"
        read-only