Bug 85417

Summary: GRUB not installed properly, resulting system fails to boot
Product: [Retired] Red Hat Linux Reporter: Miloslav Trmac <mitr>
Component: anacondaAssignee: Jeremy Katz <katzj>
Status: CLOSED CURRENTRELEASE QA Contact: Mike McLean <mikem>
Severity: high Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: 9CC: wtogami
Target Milestone: ---   
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Story Points: ---
Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 2003-07-30 02:30:06 UTC Type: ---
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
Documentation: --- CRM:
Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description Miloslav Trmac 2003-03-01 15:46:43 UTC
Description of problem:
Installer of Phoebe 8.0.94 doesn't install GRUB properly. This worked
fine in RHL 8.0 and all previous Phoebe releases and is 100% reproducible
for me.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
anaconda-8.0.94-5 (Phoebe 8.0.94)

My partitioning: single 20 GB drive
/dev/hda1: 6 GB FAT32 (windows 95)
/dev/hda2: 1 GB ext3 (/ of previous betas or previous install of 8.0.94)
/dev/hda3: 128 MB /boot of RHL 8.0
/dev/hda5: swap
/dev/hda6: 12 GB / of RHL 8.0
RHL 8.0 installed on hda{3,5,6}, GRUB in MBR.

Started RHL 8.0.94 install in text mode
Czech language (cs)
format /dev/hda3 as ext3, mount as /
Deselect all package groups, "select individual packages",
deselect all packages
Selected to install GRUB on /dev/hda2
Install finishes with no errors.

On next boot the GRUB from /dev/hda3 starts, I chose chainloading of /dev/hda2.
Result:
The chainloaded GRUB outputs:
        Loading stage2
At this point the computer either hangs, or repeats this message indefinitely
(on subsequent install attempts).

During installation, the following GRUB commands are output on VTs:
        root (hd0,1)
        install /boot/grub/stage1 d (hd0,1) /boot/grub/stage2 p 
(hd0,1)/boot/grub/grub.conf

After starting up rescue mode, chroot'ing, starting grub and repeating
these commands, boot still hangs.
OTOH, starting rescue mode, chroot'ing and executing
        /sbin/grub-install /dev/hda2
results in a booting system.
[FWIW, grub-install uses the 'setup', not 'install' GRUB command]


I have made a snapshot of /dev/hda2 bootsector and /boot before running
grub-install and after. The differences are as follows:
* boot sector:
  - byte 0x40 changed from 0x80 to 0xFF (boot drive from "hda" to "auto")
  - embedded block list of stage2 changed
* /boot/grub/stage2:
  - embedded block list changed (file offsets 0x1E8 ...0x1FC)
  - embedded config file name changed from "(hd0,1)/boot/grub/grub.conf"
    to "/boot/grub/grub.conf"
    [repeating the commands above with (hd0,1)/boot... changed to /boot
     did not fix it though].
I have no idea how to debug this further, in particular why the block
lists are different.

NOTE: I have also tried an GUI install selecting X11 and GNOME, the system
booted OK in this case.

Comment 1 Jeremy Katz 2003-05-16 20:33:43 UTC
setup uses install internally but does embedding of a stage1_5 instead of doing
just stage1 -> stage2.  I'll investigate some more.

Comment 2 Miloslav Trmac 2003-07-30 02:30:06 UTC
I can't reproduce this with RHL 9 or 9.0.93. Let's hope it has gone for good.