system hangs after "GRUB loading, please wait..."

[Mike Muldoon]

Hello all,

I have a fresh install of Redhat 7.2, with the following hardware:

AMD 700 Mhz Thunderbird
Shuttle AI61 motherboard
128 megs RAM
Promise SX6000, with 128 megs RAM, 3 SuperSwap trays
3x Maxtor HDMXT8054, 80 gig, 5400 rpm, 2 meg buffer
1x Seagate ST31621A, 1.6 gig
Kingston KNE111TX 10/100 nic
Intel 780 agp video
atapi cd
floppy


The SX6000 is a 6 channel IDE Raid card, with the 3 Maxtor drives on it.

The OS is installed on the Seagate, which is hanging on the 2nd onboard
IDE controller.

Installation goes smoothly, I can access the Raid array and partition
it. On reboot, however, I get this:


"GRUB Loading stage1.5.

GRUB loading, please wait..."


    .....and it hangs.

If I yank the SX6000 card, I get some errors about the pti_st module not
finding a device, which is correct, and it boots normally.

None of the Raid parititions are referenced in fstab.


Here's /etc/grub.conf:

default=0
timeout=10
splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
title Red Hat Linux (2.4.7-10enterprise)
    root (hd0,0)
    kernel /vmlinux-2.4.7-10enterprise ro root=/dev/hdc2
    initrd /initrd-2.4.7-10enterprise
title Red Hat Linux-up (2.4.7-10)
    root (hd0,0)
    kernel /vmlinux-2.4.7-10 ro root=/dev/hdc2
    initrd /initrd-2.4.7-10


Using the /sbin/grub command line, I have verified that the
(hd0,0)/vmlinuz-2.4.7-10 exists and is accesible. In other words,
(hd0,0) correctly points to my /boot partition.

I've read all the dox I could find, searched this list's archives and
usenet, with no clue yet.

What does this hanging behaviour mean? If the system boots correctly
without the SX6000 card, and hangs with it installed, what could that
possibly mean to grub?


thx,
Mike Muldoon