Re: [gentoo-user] grub: how to install new version of stage 1

[Alan McKinnon]

On Sunday 31 May 2009 18:12:34 John P. Burkett wrote:
> Alan McKinnon wrote:
> > On Saturday 30 May 2009 20:59:00 John P. Burkett wrote:
> >> The manual suggests doing "grub-install --no-floppy /dev/sda"
> >> but later says "If your system does not have any floppy drives, add the
> >> --no-floppy option to the above command to prevent grub from probing the
> >> (non-existing) floppy drives."  My machine has a floppy drive. Should I
> >> omit the --no-floppy option and just do "grub-install /dev/sda" ?
> >
> > The manual is actually quite clear if you know even just a little bit
> > about boot loaders.
> >
> > Use --no-floppy if
> >
> > a) you do not have a floppy drive
> > b) you do not intend grub to use the floppy drive you do have
> >
> > The question you should be asking is "have I ever booted off a floppy
> > drive in the last X years, and do I ever intend do so again?"
> >
> > The first example in the manual is assuming the answers are no and no -
> > pretty normal for the vast majority of users.
>
> Thanks, Dale and Alan, for your suggestions. Doing
> grub-install --no-floppy /dev/sda
> as root elicits the following response:
> /dev/md1 does not have any corresponding BIOS drive.
>
> In my /dev directory, I see a sda and a md1 file.
>
> Suggestions for diagnosing or resolving the problem would be much
> appreciated.
>
> John

md1 is a software raid drive. grub may or may not be able to read it depending 
on what kind of raid it is.

But I doubt you are booting from that if you have an sda, so even though grub 
finds it, just don't use it and ignore the message. You told grub where to 
install the boot loader, and it will have done that.

-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com