Grub2 fails to install to the MBR of /dev/sdb

[Lester M Petrie]

Hi
I have recently done a fresh install of Fedora 16. My machine has 2 1TB 
SATA drives, and came with Windows 7 installed on the 1st drive.  I then 
partitioned the second drive into several partitions; one for /boot, one 
for /opt, one for /usr/local, 2 for /, and one for /home. I keep the 
current version on one of the / partitions, and can install a new 
version of the second.  Rather than overwriting the MBR on the first 
drive, I changed the BIOS to boot from the second drive, and had grub 
installed there.  When I installed F16 and it came to where it wanted to 
install grub2, it gave me the options of installing on the MBR of 
/dev/sda, or installing in /boot.  Not being sure which drive it was 
calling /dev/sda, I had it install on the /boot partition.  That left me 
with still booting using grub.  I have now modified grub.conf to 
chain-load grub2, and can boot where ever I want from there.  I would 
like to now install grub2 to the MBR of /dev/sdb to eliminate the grub 
step.  I run the following command and get the error following:

#grub2-install /dev/sdb
/sbin/grub2-setup: warn: Your embedding area is unusually small. 
core.img won't fit in it..
/sbin/grub2-setup: warn: Embedding is not possible.  GRUB can only be 
installed in this setup by using blocklists.  However, blocklists are 
UNRELIABLE and their use is discouraged..
/sbin/grub2-setup: error: will not proceed with blocklists.

Sorry for the line wrap, the above is 4 lines. Below is some information 
about my machine. If anything else is needed, I will try to supply it.

  uname -a
Linux morgoth.localdomain 3.1.7-1.fc16.x86_64 #1 SMP Tue Jan 3 19:45:05 
UTC 2012 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

df -h
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sdb9        49G   16G   31G  35% /
/dev/sda2        11G  6.5G  4.2G  61% /media/RECOVERY
/dev/sda3       921G  373G  549G  41% /media/OS
/dev/sdb1        98G  8.1G   90G   9% /media/DATAPART1
/dev/sdb5        49G   27G   20G  59% /opt
/dev/sdb6        49G  482M   46G   2% /usr/local
/dev/sdb3       487M  128M  334M  28% /boot
/dev/sdb10      518G   22G  470G   5% /home
/dev/sdb7        97G  188M   92G   1% /tmp
/dev/sdb8        49G   18G   29G  38% /media/ROOTA
/dev/sdg1       466G  440G   27G  95% /media/FreeAgentDrive


mount | grep /dev/sd
/dev/sdb9 on / type ext4 
(rw,relatime,seclabel,user_xattr,acl,barrier=1,data=ordered)
/dev/sda2 on /media/RECOVERY type fuseblk 
(rw,relatime,user_id=0,group_id=0,allow_other,blksize=4096)
/dev/sda3 on /media/OS type fuseblk 
(rw,relatime,user_id=0,group_id=0,allow_other,blksize=4096)
/dev/sdb1 on /media/DATAPART1 type fuseblk 
(rw,relatime,user_id=0,group_id=0,allow_other,blksize=4096)
/dev/sdb5 on /opt type ext4 
(rw,relatime,seclabel,user_xattr,barrier=1,data=ordered)
/dev/sdb6 on /usr/local type ext4 
(rw,relatime,seclabel,user_xattr,barrier=1,data=ordered)
/dev/sdb3 on /boot type ext4 
(rw,relatime,seclabel,user_xattr,barrier=1,data=ordered)
/dev/sdb10 on /home type ext4 
(rw,relatime,seclabel,user_xattr,barrier=1,data=ordered)
/dev/sdb7 on /tmp type ext4 
(rw,relatime,seclabel,user_xattr,acl,barrier=1,data=ordered)
/dev/sdb8 on /media/ROOTA type ext4 
(rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,seclabel,user_xattr,barrier=1,data=ordered,uhelper=udisks)
/dev/sdg1 on /media/FreeAgentDrive type fuseblk 
(rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=0,group_id=0,default_permissions,allow_other,blksize=4096)
-- 
Lester M Petrie