GRUB problem with multiple ATA controllers

[Gerry Reno]

I have a machine that has both an onboard Highpoint HPT372 ATA
controller and a Highpoint HPT302 Rocket 133 ATA controller as a PCI
card. The BIOS can see all the drives attached to both controllers.
Highpoint ATA controller cards always show up first in the drive
lettering as I've installed a number of them into existing systems
without any problem. This is the first time that I've tried installing
FC6 from scratch on a system with both of these controllers. The system
has 4 drives: 2 attached on separate channels on the HPT372 and 2
attached on separate channels on the HPT302. The drives on the onboard
HPT372 are labeled /dev/hdi and /dev/hdk. The drives on the HPT302 on
the PCI card are labeled /dev/hde and /dev/hdg. The goal was to install
FC6 onto the onboard controller drives (hdi and hdk) and in fact the
installation went fine. I setup a raid array /dev/md1 for /boot and
anaconda installed GRUB into /dev/md1. However, when I rebooted the
machine after the installation the GRUB loading stage... flashes and
then the system reboots, over and over. So I checked all the BIOS (MB,
HPT onboard, nd HPT card) and everything looks good. The hdi drive is
set as the boot drive. So then I booted into rescue and did a little
investigating. Here is the output of some of the commands that I ran:

sfdisk -l:

Disk /dev/hde: 20023 cylinders, 255 heads, 63 sectors/track
Units = cylinders of 8225280 bytes, blocks of 1024 bytes, counting from 0

   Device Boot Start     End   #cyls    #blocks   Id  System
/dev/hde1   *      0+  20022   20023- 160834716   fd  Linux raid autodetect
/dev/hde2          0       -       0          0    0  Empty
/dev/hde3          0       -       0          0    0  Empty
/dev/hde4          0       -       0          0    0  Empty

Disk /dev/hdg: 20023 cylinders, 255 heads, 63 sectors/track
Units = cylinders of 8225280 bytes, blocks of 1024 bytes, counting from 0

   Device Boot Start     End   #cyls    #blocks   Id  System
/dev/hdg1   *      0+  20022   20023- 160834716   fd  Linux raid autodetect
/dev/hdg2          0       -       0          0    0  Empty
/dev/hdg3          0       -       0          0    0  Empty
/dev/hdg4          0       -       0          0    0  Empty

Disk /dev/hdi: 159560 cylinders, 16 heads, 63 sectors/track
Warning: The partition table looks like it was made
  for C/H/S=*/255/63 (instead of 159560/16/63).
For this listing I'll assume that geometry.
Units = cylinders of 8225280 bytes, blocks of 1024 bytes, counting from 0

   Device Boot Start     End   #cyls    #blocks   Id  System
/dev/hdi1   *      0+     12      13-    104391   fd  Linux raid autodetect
/dev/hdi2         13    1056    1044    8385930   fd  Linux raid autodetect
/dev/hdi3       1057   10010    8954   71923005   fd  Linux raid autodetect
/dev/hdi4          0       -       0          0    0  Empty

Disk /dev/hdk: 159560 cylinders, 16 heads, 63 sectors/track
Warning: The partition table looks like it was made
  for C/H/S=*/255/63 (instead of 159560/16/63).
For this listing I'll assume that geometry.
Units = cylinders of 8225280 bytes, blocks of 1024 bytes, counting from 0

   Device Boot Start     End   #cyls    #blocks   Id  System
/dev/hdk1   *      0+     12      13-    104391   fd  Linux raid autodetect
/dev/hdk2         13    1056    1044    8385930   fd  Linux raid autodetect
/dev/hdk3       1057   10010    8954   71923005   fd  Linux raid autodetect
/dev/hdk4          0       -       0          0    0  Empty


cat /boot/grub/device.map:

# this device map was generated by anaconda
(hd3)     /dev/hdi
(hd2)     /dev/hdk

cat /boot/grub/grub.conf:

# grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE:  You have a /boot partition.  This means that
#          all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /boot/, eg.
#          root (hd3,0)
#          kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/VolGroup01/LogVol00
#          initrd /initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/md1
default=0
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd3,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title Fedora Core (2.6.18-1.2798.fc6xen)
        root (hd3,0)
        kernel /xen.gz-2.6.18-1.2798.fc6
        module /vmlinuz-2.6.18-1.2798.fc6xen ro 
root=/dev/VolGroup01/LogVol00 rhgb quiet
        module /initrd-2.6.18-1.2798.fc6xen.img



copy of grub session:

# grub.conf generated by anaconda
#

    GNU GRUB  version 0.97  (640K lower / 3072K upper memory)

 [ Minimal BASH-like line editing is supported.  For the first word, TAB
   lists possible command completions.  Anywhere else TAB lists the 
possible
   completions of a device/filename.]

grub> root (hd0,0)
 Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0xfd

grub> root (hd1,0)
 Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0xfd

grub> root (hd2,0)
 Filesystem type is fat, partition type 0xe

grub> root (hd3,0)

Error 21: Selected disk does not exist

grub> quit

As you can see, the first partition on each drive is of type 0xfd which
is Linux Software Raid type. But, for some reason GRUB cannot see the
fourth drive at all and misidentifies the third drive first partition as
fat. So I'm suspecting I've stumbled across a bug in GRUB which is
preventing this system from booting. Has anyone run across this before?

ATA controllers:
 onboard HPT372
 PCI card HPT302
OS: Fedora Core 6
GRUB: grub-0.97-13

Also posted on the FedoraForum at:
http://forum.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=145744