[gentoo-user] Grub broke out of the blue

[Nikos Chantziaras]

I've no idea how it broke, but after an emerge --sync, a kernel 
(gentoo-sources) update was there.  After I compiled the kernel, I did 
the usual "make modules_install && make install".  I edited grub.conf 
only to the point of changing the booted kernel to the new one (just a 
matter of changing -r1 to -r2 at the end of the kernel filename).  I 
reboot, Grub stops working.  It just displays "GRUB" and hangs there.

What might have cause this?  /boot is a 50MB ext3 partition with 14MB 
free.  I had to boot from a live CD and make sda1 bootable (Windows XP) 
so I can get online and burn a repair CD that supports ext4 (/).