bugGNU GRUB - Bugs: bug #37631, Disks with 4KiB sectors aren't...

 
 

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bug #37631: Disks with 4KiB sectors aren't BIOS-bootable (not fixable unless BIOSes supporting such disks are discovered)

Submitter:  John Ericson <ericson2314>
Submitted:  Thu 25 Oct 2012 04:36:07 AM UTC
   
 
Category:  Disk & Partition Severity:  Major
Priority:  1 - Later Item Group:  Hardware-specific
Status:  None Privacy:  Public
Assigned to:  None Originator Name: 
Open/Closed:  Open Release:  other
Release:  Reproducibility:  Every Time
Planned Release:  2.03+

Jump to the original submission

Tue 05 Mar 2013 03:23:46 PM UTC, comment #13: 

This is drive/USB bridge characteristic. If it's changeable at all, it will probably be jumpers.

 Vladimir Serbinenko <phcoder>
Group administrator
Mon 04 Mar 2013 05:27:09 AM UTC, comment #12: 

Yeah, when I saw the sector size after running fdisk that occured to me. I highly doubt my BIOS is that smart as my computer is 7 years old.

I have 2.00 though so is there any way I could override the settings for the sake of booting from other computers? The whole point of this project is to be able to boot various live CDs, something that would still come in handy fixing other people's computers if not my own.

 John Ericson <ericson2314>
Sun 03 Mar 2013 09:57:08 AM UTC, comment #11: 

Do you have a BIOS able to boot from 4K-sectored disks? In 2.00 (latest release) and bzr (latest developpement) there is partial support for such disks but I haven't seen any BIOS machine able to boot from such disks. Do you see this disk in bootable disks choice at all?

 Vladimir Serbinenko <phcoder>
Group administrator
Sun 03 Mar 2013 09:19:17 AM UTC, comment #10: 

Sorry I took longer than I said I would,

Note: sector size is 4096 (not 512)

Disk /dev/sdb: 3000.6 GB, 3000558944256 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 45599 cylinders, total 732558336 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 4096 = 4096 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000246c6

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1             256   601486334  2405944316    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sdb2       601486336   680334335   315392000   83  Linux

John Ericson <ericson2314>
Thu 28 Feb 2013 10:00:52 PM UTC, comment #9: 

I am at a different computer now, but I'll do it within the next couple hours.

 John Ericson <ericson2314>
Thu 28 Feb 2013 08:45:43 PM UTC, comment #8: 

Can you paste the output of fdisk -l, especially sector size and grub-probe -t fs -v -d /dev/sdb1 and grub-probe -t fs -v -d /dev/sdb2

Vladimir Serbinenko <phcoder>
Group administrator
Thu 28 Feb 2013 08:32:27 PM UTC, comment #7: 

Yes, I have tried "--boot-directory" and the depricated "--root-directory" and something like "--directory" maybe that isn't on the man page for some reason.

John Ericson <ericson2314>
Thu 28 Feb 2013 06:59:11 PM UTC, comment #6: 

What do you mean installing on both? Using --boot-directory? And both times "unknown filesystem" ?

 Vladimir Serbinenko <phcoder>
Group administrator
Thu 28 Feb 2013 06:29:18 PM UTC, comment #5: 

Oh sorry. Here are both partitions on the drive (first is NTFS, second is ext4). I have tried installing on both.

(file #27547, file #27548)

 John Ericson <ericson2314>
Tue 26 Feb 2013 09:47:30 PM UTC, comment #4: 

PARTITION!! Not disk

 Vladimir Serbinenko <phcoder>
Group administrator
Tue 22 Jan 2013 10:45:37 PM UTC, comment #3: 

sure!

(file #27314)

 John Ericson <ericson2314>
Wed 09 Jan 2013 10:04:42 PM UTC, comment #2: 

Can you attach first 64K of the partition in question?

 Vladimir Serbinenko <phcoder>
Group administrator
Thu 25 Oct 2012 05:23:50 AM UTC, comment #1: 

I tried the same procedure via an Ubuntu 12.04 live cd, and removing my internal hard drive so only the external HDD and live CD were preseant. It failed again, this time with the more descriptive error that GRUB couldn't recognize the file system, and then told me to run grub-probe with some arguments and paste the output here, so I am.

grub-probe: info: cannot open `/media/JohnEX ntfs/boot/grub/device.map'.
grub-probe: info: Scanning for dmraid_nv RAID devices on disk hd0.
grub-probe: info: the size of hd0 is 732558336.
grub-probe: info: the size of hd0 is 732558336.
grub-probe: info: scanning hd0 for LVM.
grub-probe: info: the size of hd0 is 732558336.
grub-probe: info: no LVM signature found.
grub-probe: info: the size of hd0 is 732558336.
grub-probe: info: Scanning for mdraid09 RAID devices on disk hd0.
grub-probe: info: the size of hd0 is 732558336.
grub-probe: info: the size of hd0 is 732558336.
grub-probe: info: Scanning for mdraid1x RAID devices on disk hd0.
grub-probe: info: the size of hd0 is 732558336.
grub-probe: info: the size of hd0 is 732558336.
grub-probe: info: Scanning for mdraid09 RAID devices on disk hd0.
grub-probe: info: the size of hd0 is 732558336.
grub-probe: info: the size of hd0 is 732558336.
grub-probe: info: Scanning for mdraid09 RAID devices on disk hd0,msdos2.
grub-probe: info: the size of hd0 is 732558336.
grub-probe: info: Scanning for mdraid09 RAID devices on disk hd0,msdos1.
grub-probe: info: the size of hd0 is 732558336.
grub-probe: info: Scanning for mdraid1x RAID devices on disk hd0.
grub-probe: info: the size of hd0 is 732558336.
grub-probe: info: the size of hd0 is 732558336.
grub-probe: info: Scanning for mdraid1x RAID devices on disk hd0,msdos2.
grub-probe: info: the size of hd0 is 732558336.
grub-probe: info: Scanning for mdraid1x RAID devices on disk hd0,msdos1.
grub-probe: info: the size of hd0 is 732558336.
grub-probe: info: scanning hd0 for LVM.
grub-probe: info: the size of hd0 is 732558336.
grub-probe: info: no LVM signature found.
grub-probe: info: the size of hd0 is 732558336.
grub-probe: info: scanning hd0,msdos2 for LVM.
grub-probe: info: the size of hd0 is 732558336.
grub-probe: info: no LVM signature found.
grub-probe: info: scanning hd0,msdos1 for LVM.
grub-probe: info: the size of hd0 is 732558336.
grub-probe: info: no LVM signature found.
grub-probe: info: changing current directory to /dev.
grub-probe: info: changing current directory to snd.
grub-probe: info: changing current directory to by-path.
grub-probe: info: changing current directory to cpu.
grub-probe: info: changing current directory to dri.
grub-probe: info: changing current directory to char.
grub-probe: info: changing current directory to disk.
grub-probe: info: changing current directory to by-uuid.
grub-probe: info: changing current directory to by-label.
grub-probe: info: changing current directory to by-path.
grub-probe: info: changing current directory to by-id.
grub-probe: info: changing current directory to block.
grub-probe: info: changing current directory to pts.
grub-probe: info: /dev/sda1 starts from 2048.
grub-probe: info: opening the device hd0.
grub-probe: info: the size of hd0 is 732558336.
grub-probe: info: Partition 0 starts from 2048.
grub-probe: info: opening hd0,msdos1.
grub-probe: info: the size of hd0 is 732558336.
grub-probe: error: unknown filesystem.

Once again I'd like to reiterate that everything /is/ mounted correctly. The harddrive is new and relatively unused, and gnome was able to recognize both partitions and mount them seamlessly. There is no raid or anything else remotely out of the ordinary with this drive.

 John Ericson <ericson2314>
Thu 25 Oct 2012 04:36:07 AM UTC, original submission:  

I want to make my USB external hard drive bootable (so I can use loopback.cfg with a bunch of ISOs and not have to burn boot disks anymore). For this to work I want to store the configuration files for grub on the external hardisk, and of course install grub2 itself on the hard disk.

The harddisk has an ntfs (/dev/sdb1) and ext4 (/dev/sdb2) partion. /dev/sdb1 is mounted at /mnt. Neither partition contains an OS. I wanted to install the grub configuration files on my bigger NTFS partion, so I ran "sudo grub-install --boot-directory=/mnt/boot/ /dev/sdb" and got the error "Path `/mnt/boot/grub' is not readable by GRUB on boot. Installation is impossible. Aborting."

I then ran grub-install with --debug and figured out the error was the return of a call to grub-probe. running "grub-probe -t fs /mnt/boot/" (the line that returned the error in grub-install) I got "grub-probe: error: cannot find a GRUB drive for /dev/sdb1.  Check your device.map."

I spent a good bit of time on #grub at freenode trying to figure this out. Everything was mounted correctly, and nobody else we could think of testing turned up any leads. Jordan_U (evidentally he is well known) told me to make a bug report so here I am doing that now.

This was all with GRUB version "2.00-7ubuntu1", the default version of grub (as of writting) on Ubuntu 12.10, which I recently upgraded to.

 John Ericson <ericson2314>

 

(Note: upload size limit is set to 16384 kB, after insertion of the required escape characters.)

Attached Files
file #27547:  part1 added by ericson2314 (64KiB - application/octet-stream - Here is the first 64k of each partition as you actually requested)
file #27548:  part2 added by ericson2314 (64KiB - application/octet-stream - Here is the first 64k of each partition as you actually requested)
file #27314:  mymbr added by ericson2314 (64KiB - application/octet-stream - Here is the first 64k of my my external hardive as you asked)

 

Depends on the following items: None found

Items that depend on this one: None found

 

Carbon-Copy List
  • -email is unavailable- added by phcoder (Posted a comment)
  • -email is unavailable- added by ericson2314 (Submitted the item)

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    Follow 7 latest changes.

    Date Changed by Updated Field Previous Value => Replaced by
    2016-03-02 phcoder Item GroupSoftware Error Hardware-specific
        Planned ReleaseNone 2.03+
    2013-04-06 phcoder Priority5 - Normal 1 - Later
        SummaryI cannot grub-install my external hard drive Disks with 4KiB sectors aren't BIOS-bootable (not fixable unless BIOSes supporting such disks are discovered)
    2013-02-28 ericson2314 Attached File- Added part1, #27547
        Attached File- Added part2, #27548
    2013-01-22 ericson2314 Attached File- Added mymbr, #27314

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