limited visible partition list

[Robert Grasso]

Hello,

I hope that my post to this list is correct. I don't want to submit a bug,
but I have a strange behaviour using grub. If I am wrong, could somebody
tell me on what other list I could post ?

I have the following error when trying to boot RedHat 8 from a multiboot
workstation :

root (hd0,8):
Error 22: No such partition

Here is the story : I am building a multiboot Intel platform. I have a first
120 GB IDE disk in /dev/hda, and a 20 GB SCSI disk in /dev/sda. I have 3
primary partitions, one extended and 3 secondary partitions on /dev/hda. I
installed RedHat 7.3 on /dev/hda1 (8 GB), 1 GB swap on /dev/hda2, /home on
/dev/hda3 (20 GB), the extended partition is /dev/hda4, I installed Debian
3.0 in /dev/hda5, there is a free and empty 20 GB partition on /dev/hda6
(possibly not formatted), and RedHAT 8.0 in /dev/hda7 (the output of
fdisk -l is at the end of the mail)

When I tried to install RedHat8.0, I asked DiskDruid to create /dev/hda7 :
the partitions tree showed that free space was available. But DiskDruid told
me that there was no space left. After two more identical failures, I
created /dev/hda7 from Debian using cfdisk. Then I completed the
installation of RH 8.

Before installing RH 8, I succeeded configuring grub (from RH 7.3) in order
to select each of the OSes at boot time. When I added RH 8 (grub.conf is
listed below) and tried to select RH 8 at boot, I got the error message :

root (hd0,8):
Error 22: No such partition

I tried to install grub in the MBR from RH 8.0 (grub v0.92), but I got the
same error at boot.
I wanted to list the partitions that grub recognizes : I opened a grub
shell, and used the command-line completion :
grub> root (hd0,<TAB>
 Possible partitions are:
   Partition num: 0,  Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
   Partition num: 1,  Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x82
   Partition num: 2,  Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
   Partition num: 4,  Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
   Partition num: 5,  Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
   Partition num: 6,  Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83

I may have some trouble with my partition configuration. But from each
distribution I can see all the partitions.

Can anybody give me some suggestion ?

I temporarily switched to lilo, copying all the kernels for each
distribution to the main partition - I don't like doing so, even if it
works - I would appreciate if I could switch back to grub and its clean and
efficient syntax.

Here is my grub.conf
--------------------

address@hidden root]# cat /mnt/hda1/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 do not have a /boot partition.  This means that
#          all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /, eg.
#          root (hd0,0)
#          kernel /boot/vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/hda1
#          initrd /boot/initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/hda
default=0
timeout=10
splashimage=(hd0,0)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz
title Red Hat 7.3 SMP (2.4.20-24.7smp)
        root (hd0,0)
        kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.20-24.7smp ro root=/dev/hda1
        initrd /boot/initrd-2.4.20-24.7smp.img
title Red Hat 7.3 smp (2.4.18-3smp)
        root (hd0,0)
        kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.18-3smp ro root=/dev/hda1
        initrd /boot/initrd-2.4.18-3smp.img
title Red Hat 7.3 (2.4.18-3)
        root (hd0,0)
        kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.18-3 ro root=/dev/hda1
        initrd /boot/initrd-2.4.18-3.img
title Mandrake Linux (2.4.8-34.1mdk enterprise)
        root (hd1,4)
        kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/sda5  devfs=mount
        initrd /boot/initrd.img
title Debian (2.4.18-bf2.4)
        root (hd0,4)
        kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.18-bf2.4 root=/dev/hda5
title Red Hat 8.0 (2.4.18-14)
        root (hd0,8)
        kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.18-14 ro root=/dev/hda7
        initrd /boot/initrd-2.4.18-14.img

output of fdisk -l
------------------
address@hidden root]# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 64 heads, 32 sectors, 17501 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 2048 * 512 bytes

   Device Boot    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *         1      1015   1039344   82  Linux swap
/dev/sda2          1016     17501  16881664    5  Extended
/dev/sda5          1016      6033   5138416   83  Linux
/dev/sda6          6034     17501  11743216   83  Linux

Disk /dev/hda: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 14589 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes

   Device Boot    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1   *         1      1020   8193118+  83  Linux
/dev/hda2          1021      1151   1052257+  82  Linux swap
/dev/hda3          1152      3701  20482875   83  Linux
/dev/hda4          3702      8079  35166285    5  Extended
/dev/hda5          3702      4674   7815591   83  Linux
/dev/hda6          4675      7106  19535008+  83  Linux
/dev/hda7          7107      8079   7815591   83  Linux


Regards


  .-.   Robert GRASSO - CEDRAT S.A.
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