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Bug 1680572

Summary:	Installing grub2-efi and efi-filesystem on BIOS enabled system fails with errot "Failed to Start Switch Root"
Product:	Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8	Reporter:	Steffen Froemer <sfroemer>
Component:	grub2	Assignee:	Bootloader engineering team <bootloader-eng-team>
Status:	CLOSED ERRATA	QA Contact:	Release Test Team <release-test-team-automation>
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	unspecified
Version:	8.0	CC:	bnater, fmartine, jstransk, pdwyer, pkotvan, rpbikker, yferszt, zveleba
Target Milestone:	rc	Flags:	pm-rhel: mirror+
Target Release:	8.0
Hardware:	x86_64
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:	grub2-2.02-68.el8	Doc Type:	If docs needed, set a value
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2019-11-05 22:24:10 UTC	Type:	Bug
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:
Bug Depends On:
Bug Blocks:	1647562, 1708241, 1727807, 1749310

Description Steffen Froemer 2019-02-25 10:45:24 UTC

Description of problem:
On installing the package grub2-efi-x64 and dependency efi-filesystem will break the whole system, when running on a BIOS based system.


Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
grub2-common-2.02-57.el8.x86_64

How reproducible:
100%

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Create KVM virtual machine with BIOS
2. Install RHEL8
3. yum install -y grub2-efi-x64
4. reboot

Actual results:
The system will break on next startup with error "Failed to Start Switch Root"

Expected results:
Boot should be possible

Additional info:
Installing EFI packages in RHEL7 was possible

Comment 1 Steffen Froemer 2019-02-25 10:53:36 UTC

[    2.242366] hostname systemd[1]: Reached target Switch Root.
[    2.245408] hostname systemd[1]: Starting Switch Root...
[    2.252419] hostname systemctl[543]: Failed to switch root: Specified switch root path '/sysroot' does not seem to be an OS tree. os-release file is missing.
[    2.252846] hostname systemd[1]: initrd-switch-root.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
[    2.253084] hostname systemd[1]: initrd-switch-root.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
[    2.253357] hostname systemd[1]: Failed to start Switch Root.
[    2.253461] hostname systemd[1]: Startup finished in 1.012s (kernel) + 0 (initrd) + 1.240s (userspace) = 2.253s.
[    2.253503] hostname systemd[1]: initrd-switch-root.service: Triggering OnFailure= dependencies.

Comment 3 Branislav Náter 2019-03-15 14:22:51 UTC

I've also hit this issue.

Before grub2-efi-x64 was installed:
# grubby --info=ALL
index=0
kernel="/boot/vmlinuz-4.18.0-80.el8.x86_64"
args="ro console=tty0 console=ttyS0,115200 crashkernel=auto net.ifnames=0 rhgb quiet $tuned_params"
root="UUID=e347354c-71db-4bd1-9f19-df60a190c747"
initrd="/boot/initramfs-4.18.0-80.el8.x86_64.img $tuned_initrd"
title="Red Hat Enterprise Linux (4.18.0-80.el8.x86_64) 8.0 (Ootpa)"
id="111a2b89c187491883fe7c73e40ec958-4.18.0-80.el8.x86_64"

After grub2-efi-x64 installation:
# grubby --info=ALL
index=0
kernel="/boot/vmlinuz-4.18.0-80.el8.x86_64"
args="$kernelopts $tuned_params"
initrd="/boot/initramfs-4.18.0-80.el8.x86_64.img $tuned_initrd"
title="Red Hat Enterprise Linux (4.18.0-80.el8.x86_64) 8.0 (Ootpa)"
id="111a2b89c187491883fe7c73e40ec958-4.18.0-80.el8.x86_64"

root is missing. This issue isn't present on rhel-7

Comment 4 Javier Martinez Canillas 2019-03-15 16:59:38 UTC

The problem is that the grub2-efi-x64 package creates a /boot/grub2/grubenv symlink that points to /boot/efi/EFI/redhat/grubenv. So the /boot/grub2/grubenv file is overwritten with a broken symlink.

This issue was also present in RHEL-7.6, but the difference is that in RHEL-8.0 the kernel cmdline is defined in the grubenv file so it has a bigger consequence in this case.

Comment 6 Reinier Bikker 2019-06-04 16:27:59 UTC

Using this symlink in /boot/grub2/ is incorrect anyway. /boot/efi, if it exists, must be VFAT partition, while /boot is supposed to be ext2 or ext4. A symlink to a different partition will be unreadable for grub at boottime.

Fedora 30 is also hit by this mistake. See bug 1716193.

Comment 7 Zdenek Veleba 2019-08-05 10:12:07 UTC

Verified with grub2-2.02-74, RHEL-8.1.0-20190701.0

Comment 9 errata-xmlrpc 2019-11-05 22:24:10 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://access.redhat.com/errata/RHBA-2019:3587