"The Grub" and Darwin as ever, an ongoing saga !

Hi,
     In "all" the years (now across another decade boundry - the
3rd) since we became involved with text based installs of some OS's
including *nix variants a long way back (years ago) we had to, for
the first and last time get in and get down and dirty with the then
*nix preferred bootmanager Lilo but once, only once. It was drop 
dead fred easy. All
over in a flash. .... in other words we consulted our over
expensive Linux Tombs "Linux Unleashed" Linex this Linux that for 
the answers, we applied them (the solutions) and it worked.

(I've still got all my tonnage of sams and other publishers very 
thick Linux books. Even though they are late 80's early 90's 
vintage.)

Grub / GNU Grub (we call it "the grub" under our roof) is a totally 
different beast.... still yet evolving
with the 2 series released.

Our version of Grub is as far as i am aware in Fedora Core 3 is 
Version 0.9 of Grub

Aparently version / series release 2 has far better hfs partition support.

Has anyone any further news on GNU Grub Series 2 as to better 
native recognition of HFS and also SATA Drives ?

Thanks to the many in the prior Archives for raising and answering
the Grub + Darwin Problems. Unfortunately Grub's ability's to
redirect / reasign / remap drives at boot ... as of this date and 
with our hardware, just doesn't seem to
work for us ... God know why ... it just doesn't work.

We've reconfigured grub's config file till hell froze over. But
with no success and varying error messages and or total lockups
meaning a power off reboot .... well it was not encourageing.

This is our drive array (NON Raid)

OUR FIRST PHYSICAL HDD (commonly called Drive C: in the MS win world)

DRIVE 0(ZERO) CHANNEL (0)ZERO   (hba) 1 x 40gig IDE ATA COMPLIANT
ULTRA 100 WESTERN DIGITAL (Pinned as Master with ATA Compliant
Slave present)

This drive has MSDos v6.22 FC3 Grub Boot, several unused (at this 
time) partitions

OUR SECOND PHYSICAL HDD POSITION IS TAKEN UP BY OUR CDROM/DVD


(hbb) 1 x IDE ATA COMPLIANT LG
Super Multi CDROM / DVD Combo (Pinned as a Slave)

OUR SECOND PHYSICAL HDD (commonly called Drive D: in the MS win world)


DRIVE 1(ONE) CHANNEL(1)ONE      (hbc) 1 x 80 Gig IDE ATA COMPLIANT
ULTRA 100 WESTERN DIGITAL (Pinned as Single Drive)

This drive has Darwin ver 8.0.1 for X86 only on it - just one big 
hfs Partition.

**************************************************************************************************************
WE ARE NOT USING THE SECONDARY SLAVE CONNECTOR AT THIS TIME.
DRIVE 3(THREE) (hbd) NONE ( CONNECTION NOT USED AT THIS TIME )

**************************************************************************************************************


OUR THIRD  PHYSICAL HDD (commonly called Drive E: in the MS win world)

DRIVE 2(TWO) CHANNEL(2)TWO   (sda) 1 x 80 Gig SATA WESTERN
DIGITAL (Pinned as Master with Slave present)

This drive at present has multiple V Fat Partitions (Prob for Win2k 
Pro later install (Linux reads and writes vfat partitions by 
default))


OUR FOURTH PHYSICAL HDD (commonly called Drive F: in the MS win world)

DRIVE 3(THREE) CHANNEL(3)THREE   (sdb) 1 x 80 Gig SATA WESTERN
DIGITAL ( Pinned as Slave )

Our FC3 Distro has all of this drive to itself

OUR FIFTH PHYSICAL HDD (commonly called Drive G: in the MS win world)

DRIVE 4(FOUR) CHANNEL(4)FOUR   (sdc) 1 x 80 Gig SATA WESTERN
DIGITAL (Pinned as Master with Slave present)

Formatted for ext3 (Linux and or vmware and or other usage)

OUR SIXTH PHYSICAL HDD (commonly called Drive H: in the MS win world)

DRIVE 5(FIVE) CHANNEL(5)FIVE  (sdb) 1 x 80 Gig SATA WESTERN DIGITAL
( Pinned as Slave )

Partitioned with ext3 for vmware workstation5 or other use


****************************************************************************************************************

The reference to CHANNEL  comes from Gigabyte's own Award CMOS / 
Bios settings.

PLEASE NOTE : We have an LG Super Multi cdrom/dvd combo device on 
the Primary slave position in the drive chain.

We had a 4 x 80 GIG WD SATA DRIVE ARRAY ORIGINALY.

The First ATA COMPLIANT IDE 40 GIG ULTRA 100 Western Digital WAS 
reluctantly ADDED TO THE PRIMARY MASTER CONTROLLER STRAP FIRST.
IN THE LAST 20 HOURS WE again reluctantly ADDED THE SECOND ATA 
COMPLIANT IDE DRIVE BEING AN  80 GIG ULTRA 100 WD IT WAS PLACED AS 
A SECONDARY MASTER (ON SECOND ON MOBO IDE CONTROLLER DRIVE STRAPING 
/ FLAT RIBBON CABLE CONNECTION) aka hbc (drive is pinned as Single 
Drive). This new tech box (PC System) had a very complete FC3, w/ 
vmware workstation 5 .0 inc 3 seperate installed OS's (VM's) MS Dos 
6.22, months of internet downloads etc. etc. on it's SATA Drives.

Unfortunately because we found scant and hard to find "any" OD 
8.0.1 for X86 Documentation it didn't make life any easier, it's 
probably because it seems as though our OD  is such a big, big 
project, there are just so many links, some of which make scant and 
or little sense to a newbie/n00b. There may well be copious 
quantities of docs on od 8.0.1 out there somewhere pre install, 
however, we could not locate them prior to talkeing the download on 
board from the server.

We took a suggestion involving changes and additions to grub config 
by our Darwin discuss Forum's Own..... esteemed Shantonu Sen and 
adapted it for our drive array ...BUT it did not work.

BUT  we now can swap in the cmos the second hdd to the first 
position in the channel list, then (F10) save exit, and reboot and 
Darwin get's up and  going and boots very very quickly up the 
screen with our - f -s options, at the  boot prompt.

UNFORTUNATELY .... to boot to our other OS's we have to each time 
after shutting down Darwin hit del and enter the CMOS annd do the 
drive swap, spoken of earlier.

FURTHER

FIRSTLY AN APOLOGY TO FORUM USERS.

We humbly apoligise to all, for our unintensional mistake regarding 
the new OD Release Version Number we spoke of a just released 
Version 8.1.1 in a prior posting, it was simply a "remembered thing 
mistake."

PLEASE NOTE : THIS IS NOT CORRECT - THE LATEST RELEASE OF OD FOR 
PPC AND X86 IS VERSION 8.1.0
Which corresponds to mac os x version 10.4.1, being apple mac's new 
and latest update to Tiger.

NOT VERSION 8.1.1 <<<<<< THIS WAS OUR ERROR  !!!! Sorry.

HELPFUL UTILITYS.

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A WORD OF WARNING TO THE WISE ........

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Enjoy !!

                                                                    
    kindest regards
                                                                       jeff.

                                                Repay a favour or 
good deed with a favour or good deed.


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