GRUB 0.97 misinterprets hd0?

[Sergey Sergey]

Hi!

I have Linux (OpenSUSE) system that is loaded with GRUB 0.97.

The structure of the boot drive (drive #0) is:
/dev/sda1 = /boot partition (active parition)
/dev/sda2 = LVM2 partition

There is also drive #1 that is not used and not partitioned.

This all worked fine.

I popped in drive #2 and formatted it.

The layout of the drives, as displayed by "fdisk -l" and "blkid" is":

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *        2048      391167      194560   83  Linux
/dev/sda2          391168   976773119   488190976   8e  Linux LVM

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdc1            2048   143362047    71680000    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sdc2   *   143362048   460034047   158336000   83  Linux
/dev/sdc3       460034048  1953525167   746745560    5  Extended
/dev/sdc5       460036096   879464447   209714176    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sdc6       879466496  1298894847   209714176   83  Linux
/dev/sdc7      1298896896  1442256895    71680000   82  Linux swap / Solaris

/dev/sda1: UUID="15f3e20e-851a-4be5-903d-60d41ee681fa" TYPE="ext2"
/dev/sda2: UUID="5aJ73n-i8nb-2jr9-bUhJ-VKmu-0y4O-mFcSNs" TYPE="LVM2_member"
/dev/sdc1: LABEL="W2008R2" UUID="BB3F50865D2E3A84" TYPE="ntfs"
/dev/sdc2: LABEL="UB64" UUID="7178466b-a71b-41e3-b632-aaade102262e" SEC_TYPE="ext2" TYPE="ext3"
/dev/sdc5: LABEL="VIRT" UUID="1728C184AA7C8289" TYPE="ntfs"
/dev/sdc6: LABEL="XENVIRT" UUID="52f9233c-351b-11e4-895e-f7ea20f387af" SEC_TYPE="ext2" TYPE="ext3"
/dev/sdc7: UUID="f11d33af-60db-40ee-acdf-82725d0e70c7" TYPE="swap"
/dev/mapper/vg_ldt-lv_swap: UUID="05cd35a8-6113-413d-8e70-a288dbad007b" TYPE="swap"
/dev/mapper/vg_ldt-lv_root: UUID="d6eff4fa-e087-41db-a517-5254a8a54489" TYPE="ext3"
/dev/sdb: TYPE="isw_raid_member"

Boot drive in BIOS is still #0.

When booting the machine now, I am getting the "grub>" prompt.
"menu.lst" does not get loaded.

The output of "root" command is:

    grub> root
        (hd0,0): Filesystem unknown, partition type 0x7

However after executing "root (hd0,0)" manually I see:

    grub> root (hd0,0)
        (hd0,0): Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83

Thus it appears that even though GRUB is loaded from sda1, it subsequently somehow
selects drive#2 as hd0 during the startup, and this is where "partition type 0x7" for
(hd0,0) comes from. Yet after the "root" command is issued, hd0 becomes again drive#0.

What might be going on in here?

Thanks,
Sergey