The problem with grub and my system abruptly disappeared; for whatever reason it has something to do with the MPTSAS driver, the SATA_NV driver, or the bios on my system. Tinkering with my sata DVD writers vanquished the problem!
I would be more confused but I have had experiences like this with computers over the years and have studied Godel's incompleteness theorems and the halting problem. Summary: Two internal DVD writers were connected to SAS phy port 6 and port 7 (I have three dvd writers and six hard drives). Attempted to read a DVD disc. Neither writers read the inserted disc very well (driver complains about "bad sectors" and other stuff). Attempt to read disc from 1394a connected DVD writer; disc reads flawlessly. Turn off computer. Connected DVD writers to __SATA ports 0 and 1__ on motherboard. Leave hard drives connected to SAS ports 0 through 5. Turn on computer. __Re-enable previously-disabled SATA channel 0/1 in the bios__ and indicate that computer should boot from SAS hard drive 0 and save settings. Reboot. Computer POSTs. Grub menu appears. Select "2.6.32-5-amd64" and voila... the machine boots without a problem. Grub bug # 582342 seems to be no more...!?! Any further questions or comments? Otherwise, I will be bidding adieu. C. Cropper -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org