Grub: setting boot options possible?

I was having trouble booting gentoo's install cd so I had to manually type this "gentoo noload=pata_qdi" so it can boot the cd properly. I decided to use the general kernel, but I didn't realize it would boot gentoo with the same options as the live cd. In other words it would hang as if I was booting the original install cd. How do I set grub so the kernel boots with this option "noload=pata_qdi" Do I have to reinstall gentoo?

 

One method would to be to boot into your distro by temporarily adding the boot option on-the-fly. I'm writing this from memory, so things may have changed since I last had to do a recovery, Oh and I've never used Gentoo.

1) Boot your machine and at the Grub menu hit the 'e' key, this should begin an interactive grub editor of the selected boot stanza.
2) Cursor down to the kernel line and hit 'e' again to edit the line.
3) Add your kernel option and hit the Enter key (I think) to save.
4) Hit 'b' to boot what you've edited.

If you managed to boot into your Gentoo installation on the hard drive, the next step would be to sort this out and add the kernel option permanently. Maybe the following will help once you've managed to get in.

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?part=1&chap=10

 

Thanks Timberwolf the nice people at Gentoo suggested the same thing now I'm able to boot into gentoo.

 

The grub edit thing can be useful although I think it is probably a good idea to have a live cd rescue distro as well (or even learn about the rescue mode if your distro has one on their install disc).

 

Yea exactly to make it permanent for grub edit /boot/grub/grub.conf and throw your option right after the last option on the 'kernel' line for whatever kernel you're booting, for grub2 edit /etc/default/grub and add your option to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="put options here"

 

You need to rebuild grub after that by running sudo grub-update.