[gentoo-user] Grub heartbreaker

Just when I began to think I knew a thing or two about grub I'm
finding I am failing to get a working grub.conf going on a new
install. 

True, the install is inside a vmware machine on windows vista but that
has not presented a problem in previous versions of windows and it
does not appear to be host OS related anyway.

When I attempt to boot, instead of the normal selection one expects
from grub I get the grub command line.

So assuming I've made some mistake in grub.conf  I try to boot from
grub command line.

  root = (hd0,0)  (which is /dev/sda1 in linux terms)

  kernel /kernel-2.6.25-r1

boot

But it fails with a message saying please append a working root=?? to
the boot commands.

So reloading the install ISO I mount /mnt/gentoo/boot and edit 
grub.conf to say:

    title=kernel-2.6.25-r1
    root (hd0,0)
    kernel /kernel-2.6.25-r1 root=/dev/sda3

That fails
   kernel /kernel-2.6.25-r1 root=/dev/hda3 (Thinking maybe grub
   does not understand sda)

That Fails

  kernel /kernel-2.6.25-r1 root=(hd0)/sda3

Fails

I've even tried:
   kernel /kernel-2.6.25-r1 root=(hd0,2)

And another failure... all with the same message about appending a
working `root=???'

I'm about out of ideas here.

With the livecd for 2008.1 running, saying:

   mount /dev/sda3 /mnt/gentoo 
and
   mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/gentoo/boot

Does mount those devices as expected.

Inside the grub command line when trying to boot the new install
   root (hd0,0)  
does find the root partition and tell me its exf2fs.

  kernel /kern<tab> 

Does complete to `/kernel-2.6.25-r1'

I'm not getting where the problem is.



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