You're using /dev/sda - scsi ( well probably sata ) drivers, which are
rarely built into the kernel. The initramfs is unzipped ( iirc it's a cpio archive ), and some of the contents will provide the module required to get it to recognise the disk properly, rather than the explicit method used to read the initramfs image.
I don't see the drive LED flashing once the hang begins, which to some extent indicates that the kernel/initrd doesn't get loaded. But it could also be that I'm not quick enough to spot the few disk IOs it takes to fetch the kernel/initrd. You may not have the correct modules in the images, or, as you say, you may
have damaged something. You can wget the contents of /boot/grub ( minus menu.lst ) from my current feisty install...2.6.20.15-generic from http://www.greengecko.co.nz/grub.tar.gz - see if they help.
Got your tarball. I can untar it on /boot/grub (or what would have been /boot/grub had my system been functioning properly). I'm a bit ginger about untarring the contents on /boot/grub. Preliminary inspection indicates that stage1 is the same, but stage2 is different (even of a different size). Moreover, some other *stage1_5 files are of a different size too. What is your recommendation? should I untar and reinstall grub after chrooting to make / be the same as /dev/sda2 (my previous root)? thanks a lot for helping. regards, Rohit.
