Help with multibooting, grub stays on loop and no errors thrown

[David Gonzalez]

Hello everyone,

I have come through this issue which I wish to have fixed as soon as possible due to I need some data from the other HD *mounting the hd would work but that's not the issue*.

This is the post I made in opensuse forums so you get an overview of what's happening

Right, I have searched in the forums but I didn't get a concrete answer.

Here's the problem which is really annoying me quite a lot.

I bought a new SATA HD to test around, installed it along with opensuse 11.0 dvd. Besides that HD there is an IDE HD which has a windows installation, now after I install successfully and log in and set up my gnome etc etc and finally restart (either to due the upgrades or because i need to log in to windows) GRUB 1.5...

GRUB Loading, please wait...

_

It stays in the loop, right now I'm on windows because I chose in the menu while installing the boot into windows as default. I don't know if its going to do the same when I restart this pc again *probably*.

Now as for the order, I ran arch linux cd *I usually use it to use cfdisk* and

/dev/sda is marked as the sata driver
and /dev/sdb is marked as the ide driver

BUT while I was installing opensuse, the order it gave was

/dev/sda as the ide driver
/dev/sdb as the sata driver

I'm pretty much confused on which order to follow or what to do.

Thanks,
David


Later I explained this

Yea I noticed that I'm editing grub but now how do I know the right (hdx,x)?
Also, I'm not trying to install arch linux, I just use it because I don't have a floppy or usb with a partition tool *loads faster* just want to resolve this issue as soon as possible =/.
Talking about floppies, when I was re-installing it said something about not being able to write /boot and that I should use a floppy disk, any comments on this?
Another issue is that by default this motherboard does not recognize the SATA, meaning I'm using a PCI to be able to use this hard disk.


Here are some files beforehand: /etc/fstab

/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_WDC_WD1600JS-56_WD-WCANM4087599-part1 swap                 swap       defaults              0 0
/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_WDC_WD1600JS-56_WD-WCANM4087599-part2 /                    ext3       acl,user_xattr        1 1
/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_WDC_WD1600JS-56_WD-WCANM4087599-part3 /home                ext3       acl,user_xattr        1 2
/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_WDC_WD2000BB-00_WD-WCAL73619857-part1 /windows/C           ntfs-3g    users,gid=users,fmask=133,dmask=022,locale=en_US.UTF-8 0 0
proc                 /proc                proc       defaults              0 0
sysfs                /sys                 sysfs      noauto                0 0
debugfs              /sys/kernel/debug    debugfs    noauto                0 0
usbfs                /proc/bus/usb        usbfs      noauto                0 0
devpts               /dev/pts             devpts     mode=0620,gid=5       0 0

---------------------
/boot/grub/menu.lst
-----------------------

# Modified by YaST2. Last modification on Fri Jul 25 17:04:25 UTC 2008
default 0
timeout 8
gfxmenu (hd1,1)/boot/message

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###
title openSUSE 11.0 - 2.6.25.5-1.1
    root (hd1,1)
    kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.25.5-1.1-pae root=/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_WDC_WD1600JS-56_WD-WCANM4087599-part2 resume=/dev/sda1 splash=silent showopts vga=0x317
    initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.25.5-1.1-pae

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: failsafe###
title Failsafe -- openSUSE 11.0 - 2.6.25.5-1.1
    root (hd1,1)
    kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.25.5-1.1-pae root=/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_WDC_WD1600JS-56_WD-WCANM4087599-part2 showopts ide=nodma apm=off acpi=off noresume nosmp noapic maxcpus=0 edd=off x11failsafe vga=0x317
    initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.25.5-1.1-pae

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: windows###
title Windows
    rootnoverify (hd1,1)
    chainloader (hd0,0)+1

-----------------
device.map
-----------------
(hd1)    /dev/sda
(hd0)    /dev/sdb


---------------------------------------

Thanks,
David