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Bug 1148652 - grub2 sometimes uses the wrong config path when netbooting
Summary: grub2 sometimes uses the wrong config path when netbooting
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED ERRATA
Alias: None
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7
Classification: Red Hat
Component: grub2
Version: 7.0
Hardware: ppc64le
OS: Unspecified
unspecified
unspecified
Target Milestone: rc
: ---
Assignee: Peter Jones
QA Contact: Release Test Team
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks: 1109875 1163882 1168850 1179458 1180596
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2014-10-02 03:41 UTC by Dan Callaghan
Modified: 2015-04-13 02:45 UTC (History)
7 users (show)

Fixed In Version: grub2-2.02-0.15.el7
Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2015-03-05 11:21:54 UTC
Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Attachments (Terms of Use)


Links
System ID Private Priority Status Summary Last Updated
Red Hat Product Errata RHBA-2015:0492 0 normal SHIPPED_LIVE grub2 bug fix and enhancement update 2015-03-05 16:02:03 UTC

Description Dan Callaghan 2014-10-02 03:41:00 UTC 
Description of problem:
GRUB2 sometimes looks in the wrong place for its config file when netbooting on ppc64.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
grub2-2.02-0.8.fc21.ppc64

How reproducible:
easily enough, in this exact configuration with specific systems...

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Create a TFTP tree with: grub2-mknetdir --net-directory=/var/lib/tftpboot
2. Create a symlink /var/lib/tftpboot/ppc/<hexip>-grub pointing at ../boot/grub2/powerpc-ieee1275/core.elf
(Beaker does this symlinking so that it can *remove* the symlink after installation and cause the system to fall back to booting from hard disk.)
3. Set up some ppc64 systems to netboot with "ppc/<hexip>-grub" as the DHCP filename
4. Boot the systems and try to guess where GRUB will load its config from.

Actual results:
One one system (a KVM guest) GRUB requests:
/ppc/grub.cfg-01-52-54-00-c7-c2-2d
/ppc/grub.cfg-0A1043F9

On another (a POWER8 LPAR) GRUB requests:
//grub.cfg-01-92-8a-e0-af-1a-04
//grub.cfg-0A1043DF
...

Previous builds of GRUB would request:
/boot/grub2/grub.cfg-<...>

Expected results:
I have no idea, that's part of the problem :-) but it needs to at least be consistent, and ideally documented! (bug 1148650)

I guess the desired behaviour is to look in ppc/ since that is relative to the boot filename.

Additional info:
We ran up against this in Beaker bug 1144106 where we are trying to get ppc64 systems consistently booting with GRUB2.
Comment 2 Dan Callaghan 2014-10-02 03:45:04 UTC 
Andrew, can you please confirm that the description in comment 0 is right?

I also noticed that grub2-mknetdir takes a --subdir= option, it's not documented anywhere except this random man page from the internet:
http://www.linuxhowtos.org/manpages/8/grub2-mknetdir.htm
so I don't know if it is expected to have any influence over the paths used in GRUB.

Andrew, can you confirm that you didn't use --subdir when you produced any of the netboot trees? Or maybe you used --subdir=ppc/ which is what gave us the ppc/ directory in the config paths in the working case?
Comment 13 Peter Jones 2015-02-13 14:49:30 UTC 
Just adding a note here for docs to find as to what the currently defined order *is*.  This is assuming:

1) 7726a678-7fc0-4853-a4f6-c85ac36a120a <-- client uuid.  Each nic has one of these, and they're not ever this particular value
2) 52:54:00:ec:33:81 <-- random mac address I've chosen.
3) fw_path is the grub-style path of where grub got loaded from, i.e.
(tftp)/some/directory/ .  If it starts with (tftp), it'll try:

$(fw_path)/grub.cfg-7726a678-7fc0-4853-a4f6-c85ac36a120a
$(fw_path)/grub.cfg-01-52-54-00-ec-33-81
$(fw_path)/grub.cfg-0A000082
$(fw_path)/grub.cfg-0A00008
$(fw_path)/grub.cfg-0A0000
$(fw_path)/grub.cfg-0A000
$(fw_path)/grub.cfg-0A00
$(fw_path)/grub.cfg-0A0
$(fw_path)/grub.cfg-0A
$(fw_path)/grub.cfg-0
$(fw_path)/grub.cfg

(If you're using IPv6, it'll just try the whole IPv6 address once; it won't try one character shorter at a time.)

If $fw_path and $prefix are different, and it still hasn't found anything, it'll try all that again with $(prefix) _if_ it starts with (tftp).
Comment 15 errata-xmlrpc 2015-03-05 11:21:54 UTC 
Since the problem described in this bug report should be
resolved in a recent advisory, it has been closed with a
resolution of ERRATA.

For information on the advisory, and where to find the updated
files, follow the link below.

If the solution does not work for you, open a new bug report.

https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHBA-2015-0492.html
Comment 16 Dan Callaghan 2015-04-01 07:13:26 UTC 
Peter, I'm trying out a similar setup on x86_64 EFI and I am seeing this same (buggy) behaviour. To produce the TFTP netboot tree I ran:

grub2-mknetdir --net-directory=/var/lib/tftpboot

with:

grub2-2.02-0.16.el7.x86_64
grub2-efi-modules-2.02-0.16.el7.x86_64

Shouldn't this bug be fixed in that package? Does x86_64 EFI need to be fixed separately? Should I open a new BZ, or am I doing something wrong?
Comment 17 Dan Callaghan 2015-04-13 02:45:24 UTC 
(In reply to Dan Callaghan from comment #16)

Seems like fw_path on EFI is being set incorrectly (too many path components stripped) which is causing GRUB to use the wrong config path. I've filed a separate bug about it: bug 1211101.
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