Bug 2162113

Summary:	Booting fails after some grub2 updates
Product:	[Fedora] Fedora	Reporter:	Bruno Wolff III <bruno>
Component:	grub2	Assignee:	Javier Martinez Canillas <fmartine>
Status:	NEW ---	QA Contact:	Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity:	unspecified	Docs Contact:
Priority:	unspecified
Version:	38	CC:	atu, fmartine, lkundrak, m.a.young, mds_foss, mike, mlewando, ngompa13, pgnet.dev, pjones, renault, rharwood
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Description Bruno Wolff III 2023-01-18 19:34:37 UTC

Description of problem:
Rebooting after a week failed on one of three machines. During the week there were a few grub2 updates. The machine where it failed has /boot on mdraid. I tried downgrading grub2 from a live image (using --installroot) but that didn't help. Running grub2-install in an appropriate chroot on a live image fixed the problem. This kind of issue has happened in the past, but I don't think it happens on every grub2 update.
The machines are all x86_64. 2 use legacy bios, 1 uses efi. The one that broke uses legacy.
In this particular case the error was:
452: out of range pointer 0x9b40b010
Backtrace (.text 0xa04e .data 0x1516c):

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
2.06-76.fc38

How reproducible:
Once the problem happens it happens all of the time. I don't believe it happens on every grub2 update though.

Comment 1 W. Michael Petullo 2023-01-19 22:34:45 UTC

I had a similar experience to Bruno. I performed a "dnf update" of a Fedora computer. After the update, the computer would no longer boot. Immediately after selecting a kernel to boot in the grub menu, I saw:

452: out of range pointer: 0xcefff010
Backtrace (.text 0xa05d .data 0x1510c):
Aborted. Press any key to exit.

2.06-75.fc37 is the version I updated to, which causes the problem.

I tried a number of things to get the computer to boot again, using a rescue disk:

(1) Downgrade grub.
(2) Run grub2-mkconfig.
(3) Remove and reinstall kernel package to trigger grub action.
(4) Run grub2-install /dev/sda

Attempt (4) finally allowed the computer to boot.

Comment 2 Ben Cotton 2023-02-07 15:05:57 UTC

This bug appears to have been reported against 'rawhide' during the Fedora Linux 38 development cycle.
Changing version to 38.

Comment 3 mydarkstar 2023-05-06 04:17:17 UTC

I encountered this bug when installing Fedora 38 (KDE Spin) on an older system.
The system also uses legacy BIOS, as Bruno specified.

Both the regular ISO and latest ISO (live spins) installed an unbootable state
that led to about the exact same error message:

> 452: out of range pointer: 0xbefff010
> Backtrace (.text 0xa05d .data 0x1510c):
> Aborted. Press any key to exit.

Naturally, I checked the SMART status of all drives and ran a memtest with no errors.
I afterwards found this bug report and decided to install Fedora 37 instead for the meantime.
F37 runs perfectly fine, without any issues.

I also find similar reports from other Fedora users, such as:
https://phpc.social/@imabug/109897344783738133

Ubuntu 23.04 seems to be affected by the same issue,
and the folks at Rufus also determined GRUB to be the problem:
https://github.com/pbatard/rufus/issues/2233

Comment 4 Anton Guda 2023-05-07 17:35:56 UTC

I made some test with rebuilds, and can confirm, that 74->75 release changes lead to problem.
Sorry, patches is too heavy to locate bug.  And debug during boot is not a trivial task.

Comment 5 Marta Lewandowska 2023-05-26 07:26:10 UTC

Hi,
Have you managed to resolve this with a newer version of grub2? Installation on mdraid was temporarily broken, but should be working starting from grub version 2.06-79 or so. 
If you're still having issues, please try to upgrade your grub.