Boot sectors/devices

["Don Levey-7" <user=51@nabble.blu.org>]

 There are days when I begin to think I'm not smart enough to own a 
computer.  This is one of those days. 

A while back I thought I toasted my laptop's hard drive.  Booting up got 
past the POST, and brought me to a screen which simply said "GRUB" in 
the top left corner.  I figured that I had somehow hosed my boos sector. 

Trying to install grub, do syslinux, and the like all resulted in 
failure.  I decided the drive was history, and put it aside.  I was able 
to install a new drive, install Fedora 9, and life was happy. 

Until today - but today I *did* something which probably caused it.  I 
was trying to set up a USB key for Billix 
(http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/10088 if you happen to read Linux 
Journal, also see http://sourceforge.net/projects/billix).  The 
installation involves: 

"To install to USB key: 
0) BACKUP THE STUFF on your key.  This shouldn't hurt anything on there, 
but "stuff happens". 
1) Ensure your key is formatted with a FAT filesystem. 
2) Untar the tarball to the root of your key. 
3) run "syslinux -s /dev/xxxn" (where xxx is the device of your key and 
n is the number of the partition, ie, /dev/sda1). 
That should make your key bootable.  MAKE SURE the device is NOT your 
machine's hard disk! 
If it your USB key is not bootable, run "install-mbr -p1 /dev/xxx" 
(/dev/sda, for example - not /sda1 - we want the device, not the 
partition, in this case), then run the syslinux command over again.  The 
install-mbr command will write a MBR to the key and make the first 
partition the bootable one." 


Note in particular steps 3 & 4.  I don't have "install-mbr" on Fedora 
(as far as I can tell) but figured "install-grub" would handle it.  Heh. 
  I ran it (on /dev/sdb, the USB stick) and tried to boot off the thing. 
  This failed.  I tried to boot off the main hard drive (with or without 
the USB stick plugged in) and received the same screen/error I got 
previously. 

This tells me that: 
1) It is breakable by software, and so 
2) It is likely *fixable* by software. 

Anyone have any suggestions? 

Thanks! 
  -Don 




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