[kwlug disc.] am I asking too much of grub?

[Chris Bruner]

Raul Suarez wrote:
> When you installed grub to the MBR, did it confirm that it was able to find the stage files?
>
>   
After re-partitioning (yet again) ;to go from block 1 up,
Using grub-install
grub-install --no-floppy --root-direectory=/mnt/sda1 /dev/sda

returns

Probing devices to guess BIOS drives. This may take a long time.
Installation finished. No error reported.
This is the contents of the device map /mnt/sda1/boot/grub/device.map
Check if this is correct or not. If any of the lines is incorrect,
fix it and re-run the script `grub-install'.

(hd0) /dev/hda
(hd1) /dev/sda


My menu.lst has two boot devices
 root (hd0)
kernel ...

and
fc
root (hd1)
kernel ...


I'm using the whole usbkey so I think that's right.

So it's happy with this particular configuration.
HOWEVER....
On booting, it ignores it completely, so I think it just doesn't see the 
stage1

Make 2 partitions, first one 20Meg as a MSDOS , second on as ext2
repeat above procedure using sda1 as the grub install directory.
Looks happy, no errors.

Boot, and I get grub up from the SDCard!!!!
Try to boot into linux and it gives me
root (hd0)
 Filesystem type unknown, using whole disk
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.25 root=/dev/sda2 ro vga=773

Error 17 Cannot mount selected partition

press any key to continue.

It can't mount the ext2....


I've always had problems with grub. I think it's basically crap.
I tried the new grub (cvs) 1.96.  It's crappier

I think I'm going to give up on it as a lost cause, and go to syslinux.