Grub in MBR - Geometry Problems - and the solution

[Treutwein Bernhard]

I consistently get errors when I put grub in the mbr.

This is an old HP-Vectra VL Series 4 - 5/133 with a 2111 MB HD
Phoenix BIOS Version 4.05.9.00 - HP Rev. GT.07.24 (the latest available for
this PC)

The BIOS reports a HD geometry of 4092/16/63 (LBA Mode enabled)
The Grub Shell (Knoppix/Grub 0.93) reports 1023/64/63 number of sectors
4124736
Grub (booted from Floppy) reports 1022/64/63

When I set the geometry in the grub shell to 4092/16/63 and
do a

geometry (hd0) 4092 16 63
root (hd0,2)             (a DOS VFAT12 partition with grub stage1, stage2,
and fat_stage1_5)
setup (hd0)

Grub searches and finds /boot/grub/*stage* and
embeds 15 sectors running
embed /boot/grub/fat_stage1_5 (hd0)
and runs
install /boot/grub/stage1 (hd0) (hd0)1+15 p (hd0,2)/boot/grub/stage2
(both commands succeed)

the grub shell installs grub in the MBR and on the
next reboot I get a

GRUB Read Error

when I install grub from itself (0.93 booted from a floppy) with

root (hd0,2)
setup (hd0)

everything works similar to the setup from the grub shell, but

chainloader (hd0)+1 works and loads correctly the stuff from the
hard disk, but on a reboot I get again a 

GRUB Read Error

Including --force-lba on the setup command line does (for the
last case) does not change anything.

Oops, as a last thing, I tried the 'd' option for install, which I
had overlooked until now, and it works ...

Maybe my experiences are of some help for somebody else ...
--
        Bernhard Treutwein
        ------------------
        Work: Bernhard.Treutwein at verwaltung.uni-muenchen.de
        Home: BdT at wildwein.de