Fedora Core 3 Hangs When Booting

From: Paul (paul_malone_at_kywb.uscourts.gov)
Date: 11/19/04 

Date: 19 Nov 2004 11:32:47 -0800

I have an AMD 64 CPU and two SATA disk drives configured with RAID 1.
I installed Windows XP first on /dev/sda1, then installed Fedora Core
3 x86_64 on /dev/sda2 and the installation seemed to go okay.
However, when I tried rebooting into Linux, grub hangs with the
message: "Grub loading stage2...". I booted off the installation DVD
using "linux rescue" and even though /boot/grub/grub.conf seemed to
look okay, I tried
# grub-install /dev/sda2 --recheck
# dd if=/dev/sda2 of=/bootsect.lnx bs=512 count=1

I then booted into Windows XP, copied bootsect.lnx to C:\, and added
C:\bootsect.ini="Fedora Core 3" to boot.ini. I still get the same
message when trying to boot Fedora. I also tried creating a Grub boot
floppy and get the same error using it.

I would like to be able to dual boot XP and Fedora. I want to use the
Windows XP boot manager, a boot floppy for Fedora, or a boot CD for
Fedora. I do not want to overwrite the Windows XP boot managers with
Grub. The kernel seems to be too big to fit on a floppy. Is there a
way to make a boot floppy? What about a CD? I looked at some how
to's but they mention using "mkbootdisk" which I can't find even
though I installed pretty much everything. What about using the XP
boot manager? Is there a way to get this dual booting to work with
two SATA drives in a hardware RAID 1 configuration? Below is some
more information.

Thanks for your help,
Paul

# df -k
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00
                      17675060 4894012 11883208 30% /
/dev/sda2 101105 10063 85821 11% /boot
none 7163 4939 1815 74% /dev/pts
/dev/fd0 1424 195 1229 14% /mnt/floppy

# fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sda: 74.3 GB, 74355769344 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9039 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 6527 52428096 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 6528 6540 104422+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 6541 9039 20073217+ 8e Linux LVM

Disk /dev/sdb: 74.3 GB, 74355769344 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9039 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 6527 52428096 7 HPFS/NTFS

# mount
/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 on / type ext3 (rw,defaults)
/dev/sda2 on /boot type ext3 (rw,defaults)
none on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,gid=5,mode=620)
none on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,defaults)
none on /proc type proc (rw,defaults)
none on /sys type sysfs (rw,defaults)
/dev/fd0 on /mnt/floppy type vfat (rw)

# lvdisplay
  --- Logical volume ---
  LV Name /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00
  VG Name VolGroup00
  LV UUID 3qXdwo-ohbN-rAmK-kl0X-uI6h-IG8I-ATiA10
  LV Write Access read/write
  LV Status available
  # open 1
  LV Size 17.12 GB
  Current LE 548
  Segments 1
  Allocation inherit
  Read ahead sectors 0
  Block device 253:0
    
  --- Logical volume ---
  LV Name /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol01
  VG Name VolGroup00
  LV UUID hHRCNp-NXwo-cEZk-NnDD-Nrez-cWGj-7N9Asx
  LV Write Access read/write
  LV Status available
  # open 1
  LV Size 1.94 GB
  Current LE 62
  Segments 1
  Allocation inherit
  Read ahead sectors 0
  Block device 253:1
    
# ls -al /boot
total 4230
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 1024 Nov 16 16:29 .
drwxr-xr-x 24 root root 4096 Nov 19 04:00 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 44647 Nov 2 15:00 config-2.6.9-1.667
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 1024 Nov 19 03:57 grub
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1583431 Nov 16 16:19 initrd-2.6.9-1.667.img
drwx------ 2 root root 12288 Nov 16 11:16 lost+found
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 81860 Sep 29 14:42 memtest86+-1.26
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 848039 Nov 2 15:00 System.map-2.6.9-1.667
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1719103 Nov 2 15:00 vmlinuz-2.6.9-1.667

# cat /boot/grub/grub.conf
# grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this
file
# NOTICE: You have a /boot partition. This means that
# all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /boot/, eg.
# root (hd0,1)
# kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00
# initrd /initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/sda
default=1
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd0,1)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title Fedora Core (2.6.9-1.667)
        root (hd0,1)
        kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.9-1.667 ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00
rhgb quiet
        initrd /initrd-2.6.9-1.667.img
title Windows XP
        rootnoverify (hd0,0)
        chainloader +1

# cat /boot/grub/device.map
(fd0) /dev/fd0
(hd0) /dev/sda
(hd1) /dev/sdb

==============================================================================================--

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