bugGNU GRUB - Bugs: bug #37781, grub fails to find final partition...

 
 

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bug #37781: grub fails to find final partition sda10 bu UUID

Submitter:  J.J. Green <jjg>
Submitted:  Tue 20 Nov 2012 10:14:47 AM UTC
   
 
Category:  Booting Severity:  Major
Priority:  5 - Normal Item Group:  Software Error
Status:  Fixed Privacy:  Public
Assigned to:  None Originator Name:  J.J. Green
Open/Closed:  Closed Release:  1.97
Release:  Reproducibility:  Every Time
Planned Release:  None

Mon 10 Dec 2012 05:52:49 PM UTC, comment #3: 

The default font is copied to /boot/grub in 2.00. If you set your own GRUB_FONT you should use a path under /boot as well.

Vladimir Serbinenko <phcoder>
Group administrator
Wed 21 Nov 2012 04:36:59 PM UTC, comment #2: 

Thanks Vladimir,

Running ls -l in the grub console did, as you expected, list only partitions 1-5
(this machine is very old). It is unfortunate that Debian expects to be able
to access resources on /usr at boot-time without regard to BIOSs which are as old
as the one on this machine.  I would normally submit a bug report, but I have found
in the past that bugs to Debain of the form "does not work on my old machine" are
not addressed.

I suggest that this is now closed as not-a-bug

Thanks all

Jim

J.J. Green <jjg>
Tue 20 Nov 2012 08:27:42 PM UTC, comment #1: 

Sounds like your BIOS has a size limit. To check it see if ls -l in GRUB2 returns the same size as real one. If it doesn't you'll have either to use separate /boot or use --disk-module=ata

Vladimir Serbinenko <phcoder>
Group administrator
Tue 20 Nov 2012 10:14:47 AM UTC, original submission:  

Hi all,

I discovered an odd problem with Grub2 on an old IBM laptop
(560Z) running Debian squeeze which seems to be related to Grub2
finding final or high numbered (msdos) partitions by UUID. 

The problem started on an upgrade from Grub to Grub2, the symptoms
being a minute delay "Welcome to grub", then "cannot find
partition" for a few seconds and then the boot menu.  Boot then
proceeded as normal, but without the specified GFXMODE.

After much playing around I find that the problem seems to be
the line

  prepare_grub_to_access_device `${grub_probe} --target=device "${GRUB_FONT}"`

in /etc/grub.d/00_header, leading to a line like

    search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root <UUID>

in /boot/grub/grub.cfg.  It seems that this search fails, so
the subsequent loadfont fails, so the GFXMODE is not enabled.
I have confirmed the the <UUID> is correct, at least it is
the same as that returned by blkid.

The partition (mounted on /usr) is a little unusual in that it
is sda10 which is the last partition on the (40GB) disk.  It
occurs to me that there might be a fencepost error in the UUID
partition identification code, but I couldn't see anything on a
quick look around.  Perhaps someone more knowlegable about the
codebase would know where to look for such a problem.

I have fixed the problem on my machine (copying the font to
/boot/grub and modifying 00_header to search there), but I'd be
happy to provide further info and run tests etc.

Best wishes

Jim

J.J. Green <jjg>

 

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    Follow 2 latest changes.

    Date Changed by Updated Field Previous Value => Replaced by
    2012-12-10 phcoder StatusNone Fixed
        Open/ClosedOpen Closed

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