boot problem (stage 2 boot?)

[Gary W. Swearingen]

Glenn Dawson <glenn at antimatter.net> writes:

> I doubt there's nothing wrong with the MBR per se, but if it's looking in the wrong place for the third stage loader
> you'll see exactly the problem you have.

Where "it's" probably refers to "boot code", not to the MBR, which
doesn't look for anything except the confusingly-named "first-stage"
boot loader (same as /boot/boot1) in the first sector of your 4th
primary partition.  Then that loads the second-stage boot loader (same
as /boot/boot2) which gives the "boot:" prompt after failing to run
/boot/loader and failing to run a kernel.

It seems that finding boot1 and boot2 is possible with bad geometry,
but finding /boot/loader or the kernel is not.   ???