grub-pc still too obtuse

[Arthur Marsh]

I just installed grub 1.96+20090307-1 on Debian unstable and managed to get:

grub-setup "(hd0)"

to run, but the fact that one needs to run grub-setup in that way in 
order to install the latest version of grub on the boot media still 
isn't documented, and I can't figure out how to run grub-probe based on 
the current manual page and documentation.

My setup is:

/boot/grub/device.map:

(hd0)   /dev/hda
(hd1)   /dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SIBM_DCAS-34330W_F3T92021

file systems as reported by mount:

/dev/hda5 on / type ext3 (rw,errors=remount-ro)
tmpfs on /lib/init/rw type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,mode=0755)
proc on /proc type proc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
procbususb on /proc/bus/usb type usbfs (rw)
udev on /dev type tmpfs (rw,mode=0755)
tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,noexec,nosuid,gid=5,mode=620)
fusectl on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw)
/dev/hda1 on /victoriac type vfat (rw,uid=65534,gid=65534,umask=000)
/dev/sdb1 on /scsic type vfat (rw,uid=65534,gid=65534,umask=000)
/dev/sda on /mnt/usb8gig type vfat 
(rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,uid=65534,gid=65534,umask=000,shortname=win95)
/dev/hda3 on /mirror3 type ext3 (rw,errors=remount-ro)
/dev/hda7 on /victoriad type vfat (rw,uid=65534,gid=65534,umask=000)
/dev/sdb5 on /scsid type vfat (rw,uid=65534,gid=65534,umask=000)
binfmt_misc on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc 
(rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)

So my Linux root partition is on /dev/hda5

I would like to have a grub menu entry to attempt booting off the USB 
drive as this machine is too old to support booting directly off USB.

I have also not been successful on booting from /dev/sdb1 (Win95) unless 
I change the BIOS to boot from SCSI, and even to do that, I had to mark 
the FAT partitions on /dev/hda "hidden".

Any suggestions welcome.

Arthur.