[gentoo-user] Grub Error 21: Selected disk does not exist

[Grant Edwards]

I just did an install onto a machine with a single internal IDE
hard drive.  hda1 is Win2K (NTFS), hda2 is swap, hda3 is Gentoo
root (ext3).

I was following the "quick install" doc, and everything went
fine until I got to the section on installing grub.  After
emerging grub, the "root" command failed:

  grub> root (hd0,2)

  Error 21: Selected disk does not exist

I tried hd0,hd1,hd2,hd3 with various paritions from 0 to 2 and
always got an Error 21.  The drive is recognized correctly by
the BIOS, and Win2K boots and runs fine.  I rebooted and
chroot'ed several times and always got Error 21.

So, I downloaded a Grub CD from http://www.supergrubdisk.org/.
The grub on the CD recognized the disk and all partitions
correctly and installed just fine using the normal procedure:

   root (hd0,2)
   setup (hd0)

I rebooted, and everything works great.

Any ideas on why grub couldn't see any hard drives when it was
run from the 2008.0 minimal install CD's chroot'ed environment?
I've done dozens of Gentoo installs, and I've never seen this
problem before.

-- 
Grant