[Sussex] grub problem - post kernel upgrade

[John D.]

Hi list,

During my regular "emerge -uD world", I noticed that there was a new 
kernel version.

So as usual, I ran genkernel to compile it. When it came to reboot the 
damn system would only drop me into a grub prompt (grub>).

The only thing that I could find was telling me to do
"grub> root (hd0,0)"
and
"grub> setup (hd0)"

I don't understand what either of those commands did.

Amongst my pile of junk I located a kanotix live CD (knoppix 
derivative). Booted that and can see that there is a grub.conf and a 
grub.conf.bak in the /boot partition. The problem seems to be that I 
can't just copy the old version from the .bak to the main grub.conf 
because when I try that I just get told that the main system is only 
available in read-only - I've done some searching for ideas, but both 
the main knoppix page and one from IBM's site that says about rescuing 
with knoppix tell me to mount and the chroot - but I can't chroot to get 
into the main system.

Obviously, it'd be better if I could just copy the .bak to the main 
grub.conf (which appears to be empty), but I'd write it long hand and 
enter the info if I can just get into the system or see the grub.conf 
file via the grub> prompt.

Does anyone know how I can get round this please??

regards

John D.