Grub fails (I think at stage 1)

[node_one]

I have been trying to setup Sabayon on my desktop for quite some time, but have many problems.

The one that I really need fixed is, at least being able to get to the grub menu. I did some reading and I believe that either:

Grub MBR is not finding stage 1 or 1.5
Grub MBR is not installing in the correct disk's MBR

I have a very "difficult" HD configuration. These are the drives by attachment and the Sabayon Live CD/DVD identifiers. I have no idea what the boot order is.

Nforce4 Ultra IDE
-- WD 250 GB -- sdb
-- WD 160 GB -- sdc
-- WD 250 GB -- sdd
-- WD 160 GB -- sde
Nforce4 Ultra SATA
-- Hitachi 160 GB -- sda
--
--
--
Silicon Image 0680 IDE RAID PCI card
--Seagate 80GB -- sdf
--NEC DVD+RW --
--Seagate 80GB -- sdg
--Seagate 200GB -- sdh

I believe that the BIOS on this thing is supposed to scan all of the MBRs, but it may not. I can also reorder the drives in the bios, but I am not sure that has any effect and what the order should be. If anyone has any ideas on how to properly install Sabayon so that it will boot, please help.

[WarraWarra]

Only real help is the gentoo.org help /manual page's they have the how-to's for grub and can possibly fix this if you follow the grub how-to.

When you had the live dvd /cd in and the install started there is grub and advanced grub options and is likely the best way to set this.

This grub options there will also ask you what partiton or MBR do you want to write the grub thingy too.

MBR of first hd or /dev/sdb etc , etc .

Might try to go into live dvd and then use the repair option and select grub only and redo the grub as it should do a auto config for you , you can edit this and then apply.

Another thing might be that your drives MBR is not seen or recognized by the live dvd and so does the numbering wrong in the grub config.
To check for this use the partition manager program on the live dvd desktop and see if all drives are listed there. If not repair their MBR's so sabayon can see them or if solaris use solaris boot menu / lilo / grub .

Some stuff like ext4 or solaris 128bit partition thingy is not yet in linux in general so grub / disk management can not read / see disk or list them as empty.

Alternatively get a free boot menu program and or "acronis disk director" for windows comes with OS selector / boot menu thingy and this should be able to list all hd's / partition that is bootable.

Only thing is you will then have to write each hd's boot menu / grub to the actual disk /dev/sda has it's own as does /dev/sdb instead of MBR and let a program / F12 on my laptop does this as well list bootable drives. Maybe your bios has a F12 or F8 option to list bootable devices and then just boot the selected hd.

Can even do last option above and just list alternative hd's with chainloader+1 option or the likes in grub / manually edit grub.conf . Have to read grub manual for this / how-to.

Hope this helps.