unbelievable, #$@%%!! grub breaks for me AGAIN

[<briand@aracnet.com>]

I recovered by editing the grub commands using the 'e' command and by some
miracle got the thing to ask me what my boot disk is AFTER booting.
very strange.  here's the best part.  I gave it the same device grub
"couldn't find" and the system booted just fine. *##%@$&! grub.

so I'm not sure what I need to provide to have some kind soul help me
with this, so I'll just describe the problem and maybe somebody can
tell me what additional info to provide.

the problem, of course, is that it times out and tells me it can't find
(?) the root filesystem.

I've run update-grub, and it things everything is just hunky dory.
insert cursing here.

here's the menu entry that DOESN'T WORK (the linux line is wrapped) :

        insmod part_msdos
        insmod ext2
        set root='(hd0,msdos2)'
        search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set a948d6b6-8395-49a1-9f0f-21a10ceee9c2
        echo    'Loading Linux 2.6.32-5-amd64 ...'

        linux   /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-5-amd64 root=UUID=a948d6b6-8395-49a1-9f0f-21a10ceee9c2 ro  quiet

        echo    'Loading initial ramdisk ...'
        initrd  /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-5-amd64

I have checked the uuid's using "search" from the command line in the booted, working system and it agrees with what grub is using.

I _think_, but am not sure, that when I used 'e' to edit the grub commands I DELETED the search command and replaced the uuid with /dev/sda2 in the linux command.

two things seem odd to me.

1 /dev/sda2 is a linux partition so what's up with insmod part_msdos and why is set root (hd0, msdos2) ??

2 why is it insmod'ing ext2 when / is an ext3 filesystem ?

Any help greatly appreciated.  I'm going to have to reboot this thing someday, and I'd like to know how to fix this.

more importantly, why does grub not know that it's broken ??!!


Thanks,

Brian

p.s. hugs and kisses to whoever added busybox to the failed to find root disk recovery.  that's really cool.  helped me get going because I wasn't exactly sure which device was root.