Bug 855849

I see the same symptom on ASUS mainboard, using physical DVD of Fedora 18-Alpha-RC1 netinst.iso

My smolt profile: http://www.smolts.org/client/show/pub_a0f8be89-b530-4af5-a50a-e1d06c11b3cb

Please retry with RC2.

The same problem persists in RC2 using physical DVD from x86_64 netinst.iso.

*** Bug 856922 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

This also happens if you try and boot native UEFI from a dd'ed USB stick (dd if=Fedora-18-Alpha-x86_64-DVD.iso of=/dev/sdc ). So to tot up, this affects netinst and DVD whether written to a shiny disc or dd'ed, but *not* written with livecd-iso-to-disk (in that case anaconda starts and works, but you hit the later bug where the installed system doesn't boot). Adjusting summary.

This appears to be a grub2 bug. /proc/cmdline has the \ stripped out so the LABEL with the spaces has x20

Why the heck are we using spaces in the label in the first place? Spaces cause no end of trouble everywhere they are used. Just use underscores.

Please describe the problem in more details.

What is in grub.cfg?

How is the grub.cfg created? grub2-mkconfig will not use labels.

1. Burn Fedora-18-Alpha-x86_64-netinst.iso to DVD.
2. Boot the DVD in UEFI mode on a machine with ASUS mainboard with UEFI BIOS.
3. Wait.
4. Console displays:
   dracut-initqueue: Warning: Could not boot
   dracut-initqueue: Warning: /dev/root does not exist
and then dracut gives you an emergency shell.

There is no grub.cfg anywhere in the filesystem.
I will attach the output from "journalctl --all" and "ls -R /".

Created attachment 612629 [details]
output from journalctl --all

Sep 13 20:26:02 localhost systemd-udevd[357]: failed to execute '/usr/lib/systemd/systemd-sysctl' '/usr/lib/systemd/systemd-sysctl --prefix=/proc/sys/net/ipv4/conf/em1 --prefix=/proc/sys/net/ipv4/neigh/em1 --prefix=/proc/sys/net/ipv6/conf/em1 --prefix=/proc/sys/net/ipv6/neigh/em1': No such file or directory

Created attachment 612630 [details]
ls -R /

(In reply to comment #9)
> 1. Burn Fedora-18-Alpha-x86_64-netinst.iso to DVD.

-RC3

[I don't have a real efi system for testing, but I know grub and can triage.]

There _must_ be a .efi and grub.cfg somewhere on the boot media ... but probably in some hidden iso9660 boot section.

A first indication on this issue of what the problem is:
/dev/disk/by-label/Fedora\x2018\x20x86_64

What is in /proc/cmdline?

In the dracut emergency shell:
# cat /proc/cmdline
BOOT_IMAGE=/images/pxeboot/vmlinuz inst.stage2=hd:LABEL=Fedorax2018x20x86_64
# ls /dev/disk/by-label
Fedora\x2018\x20x86_64    <<also labels from harddrive partition>>
# 

There are no backslashes '\\' in /proc/cmdline.  There are two backslashes in /dev/disk/by-label; both of them are in substrings "\x20" which means " ", namely a <Space> character.

During booting, the VGA console displays "Welcome to GRUB", followed by a Grub menu and a one-minute countdown timer.  There are to items in the menu.  The first is "Fedora 18" and the second is "Test this media & start Fedora".

-----Fedora:
setparams 'Fedora 18'

        linuxefi /images/pxeboot/vmlinuz inst.stage2=hd:LABEL=Fedora\x2018\x20x86_64
        initrdefi /images/pxeboot/initrd.img
-----

-----Test this media & start Fedora:
setparams 'Test this media & Fedora'

        linuxefi /images/pxeboot/vmlinuz inst.stage2=hd:LABEL=Fedora\x2018\x20x86_64 quiet rd.live.check
        initrdefi /images/pxeboot/initrd.img
-----

Corrections: the Grub timeout is only 5 (five) seconds. There are "two" items in the menu.  The expansion of the second menu item begins "setparams 'Test this media & start Fedora'".

The grub.cfg language is very similar to sh. \ is probably processed like shells will process it. '\x' is an invalid escape sequence and it will be read as 'x'.

What happens if you edit the entry to something like
  Fedora\\x2018\\x20x86_64
and boot?

Editing the grub entry so that the name reads
  Fedora\\x2018\\x20x86_64
followed by boot (<F10>) gets the same dracut error: /dev/root does not exist.
In the dracut emergency shell,
# cat /proc/cmdline
BOOT_IMAGE=/images/pxeboot/vmlinuz inst.stage2=hd:LABEL=Fedora\\x2018\\x20x86_64
# ls /dev/disk/by-label
Fedora\x2018\x20x86_64    <<also labels from harddrive partition>>
# 

So /proc/cmdline has "doubled backslashes" (two consecutive backslash characters, in two places.)

Thanks, that demonstrates the problem.

This also affects VirtualBox 4.2.0 with EFI enabled, booting from the ISO file. DVD and netinst both fail as described. The live image seems to be hung in the boot process, using 100% CPU. Not sure if it will continue since it's very slow.

yeah, I would expect that. When you use a VM to boot an image you're effectively booting from a shiny spinny DVD: the virtual system has a virtual DVD drive.

I get the same issue with F18a RC3, affected (ASUS) system:

$ cat /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/board_name 
SABERTOOTH 990FX

$ cat /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/bios_version 
1304

Also, on my Dell e4310 it just does not work. It used to work (now i get a black screen then and then it returns to the boot menu), but it is definitivelly 
a separate issue from the one discussed here.

Discussed at 2012-09-26 blocker review meeting: http://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-qa/2012-09-26/f18-beta-blocker-review-1.2012-09-26-16.03.log.txt . Accepted as a blocker per Beta criterion "The installer must boot (if appropriate) and run on all primary architectures, with all system firmware types that are common on those architectures, from default live image, DVD, and boot.iso install media when written to a USB stick with any of the officially supported methods", we don't consider 'write it another way' an acceptable workaround for Beta. The bug here seems to be well known already, it's to do with the spaces in the volume label.

This is a grub2 bug, but in a pretty obscure corner case.

I would recommend solving the current blocker status by working around the issue by using labels without spaces.

just to poke this one, still valid with the latest pre-beta smoketest build (smoke3). no-one's done anything about this yet, it seems.

grub2-2.00-9.fc18 has been submitted as an update for Fedora 18.
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/grub2-2.00-9.fc18

grub2-2.00-9.fc18 fixed this problem for me.

Package grub2-2.00-9.fc18:
* should fix your issue,
* was pushed to the Fedora 18 testing repository,
* should be available at your local mirror within two days.
Update it with:
# su -c 'yum update --enablerepo=updates-testing grub2-2.00-9.fc18'
as soon as you are able to.
Please go to the following url:
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-2012-15149/grub2-2.00-9.fc18
then log in and leave karma (feedback).

Yup, test image tflink built boots fine when dd'ed to USB for me. I confirmed the test image does have spaces in the partition label.

Update was pushed stable on 10-03, closing.

Beta TC6 still doesn't boot with same error for me.

The error message is a very generic one. The fact that you see it doesn't necessarily mean you hit this bug. Please file a new bug with more details on exactly what process you followed and if possible a picture of the screen you see at failure time.