Bug 496952 - preupgrade overwrite MBR instead of first partition on HDD
Summary: preupgrade overwrite MBR instead of first partition on HDD
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED WONTFIX
Alias: None
Product: Fedora
Classification: Fedora
Component: preupgrade
Version: 11
Hardware: All
OS: Linux
high
high
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Seth Vidal
QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2009-04-21 19:02 UTC by Luya Tshimbalanga
Modified: 2014-01-21 23:09 UTC (History)
4 users (show)

Fixed In Version: 1.1.0-1.fc10
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2010-06-28 12:09:19 UTC
Type: ---
Embargoed:


Attachments (Terms of Use)
Added image for detail (514.89 KB, image/png)
2009-04-21 20:13 UTC, Luya Tshimbalanga
no flags Details

Description Luya Tshimbalanga 2009-04-21 19:02:47 UTC
Description of problem:
A triple boot issue. I have Windows XP on first HDD, Fedora 10 on second, and another Fedora to be Rawhide on third hDD. The latter uses preupgrade and grub is set on the first partition. The upgrade should only occur on that HDD, not on masterboot as preupgrade does not give specification for updating Grub.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):


How reproducible:
Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Start preupgrade on the third HDD containing Fedora 10
2. Reboot the system and let preupgrade do the work
3.
  
Actual results:
Overwrite on the MBR instead of first partition of third HDD

Expected results:
Should only upgrade on specified partition for grub leaving MBR intact

Additional info:

Comment 1 Luya Tshimbalanga 2009-04-21 19:17:05 UTC
Login from upgraded Rawhide, I noticed preupgrade also upgrade the second HDD containing the stable Fedora. I think this bug is very serious for people who are triple booting their system because preupgrade did not give any input to only upgrade specific partition. Not only it updated grub from the third HDD as expected, it also overwrite grub from MBR which should not be changed. 

I think it will be a good thime to address issue on triple booting because it seems to be a known bug related to anaconda.

Comment 2 Luya Tshimbalanga 2009-04-21 20:13:08 UTC
Created attachment 340626 [details]
Added image for detail

Comment 3 Will Woods 2009-04-21 21:04:04 UTC
There's two bugs here:

1) preupgrade-1.0.x doesn't know how to tell anaconda which partition to upgrade.

This is because anaconda didn't have a command for this prior to F11 Beta (see bug 471232). This should be fixed in preupgrade-1.1.0 for upgrades to Rawhide or F11.

2) preupgrade attempted to install GRUB

preupgrade generates a kickstart file that says:
  bootloader --upgrade
I assumed this should only upgrade the bootloader config, but I may be wrong. It's been updated to do:
  bootloader --upgrade --location=none
This explicitly tells anaconda *not* to install a new bootloader during the upgrade.

This code is in preupgrade bzr rev 290; preupgrade-1.1.0pre2 should be built soon including this patch.

Comment 4 Luya Tshimbalanga 2009-04-22 15:17:16 UTC
Would you mind to write a warning message when it comes to use preupgrade with version 1.0.x? In my case, the damage is done because preupgrade entirely replaced my stable Fedora 10 by rawhide. You would not want to receive a lot of complain from Fedora 10 users unless version 1.1.x lands on stable.

Comment 5 Will Woods 2009-04-22 15:31:16 UTC
Warning message? No, I'm not going to push out a 1.0.x update that says "don't use 1.0.x". That's silly. 

I'll try to get 1.1.0pre2 into the repos for F9/F10 ASAP.

Comment 6 Fedora Update System 2009-04-28 22:07:42 UTC
preupgrade-1.1.0-0.pre2.fc10 has been submitted as an update for Fedora 10.
http://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/preupgrade-1.1.0-0.pre2.fc10

Comment 7 Fedora Update System 2009-05-02 16:42:05 UTC
preupgrade-1.1.0-0.pre2.fc10 has been pushed to the Fedora 10 testing repository.  If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.
 If you want to test the update, you can install it with 
 su -c 'yum --enablerepo=updates-testing update preupgrade'.  You can provide feedback for this update here: http://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/F10/FEDORA-2009-4211

Comment 8 Fedora Update System 2009-05-13 22:47:06 UTC
preupgrade-1.1.0-1.fc9 has been submitted as an update for Fedora 9.
http://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/preupgrade-1.1.0-1.fc9

Comment 9 Fedora Update System 2009-05-13 22:47:59 UTC
preupgrade-1.1.0-1.fc11 has been submitted as an update for Fedora 11.
http://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/preupgrade-1.1.0-1.fc11

Comment 10 Fedora Update System 2009-05-15 23:34:05 UTC
preupgrade-1.1.0-1.fc10 has been pushed to the Fedora 10 testing repository.  If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.
 If you want to test the update, you can install it with 
 su -c 'yum --enablerepo=updates-testing update preupgrade'.  You can provide feedback for this update here: http://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/F10/FEDORA-2009-4211

Comment 11 Arenas Belon, Carlo Marcelo 2009-05-18 08:37:12 UTC
fedora 11 might be released before this version package gets into "updates" and so will affect people trying to use preupgrade to move from fedora 10 into the new release.

Comment 12 Fedora Update System 2009-05-28 07:58:20 UTC
preupgrade-1.1.0-1.fc11 has been pushed to the Fedora 11 stable repository.  If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.

Comment 13 Fedora Update System 2009-05-28 08:11:03 UTC
preupgrade-1.1.0-1.fc9 has been pushed to the Fedora 9 stable repository.  If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.

Comment 14 Fedora Update System 2009-05-28 08:13:02 UTC
preupgrade-1.1.0-1.fc10 has been pushed to the Fedora 10 stable repository.  If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.

Comment 15 Greg 2009-11-19 11:23:59 UTC
Just ran into this same bug while trying to use preupgrade to upgrade from F11 to F12.  F11 was completely up to date before running preupgrade.

My MBR boots Windows 7.  It's boot loader chainloads grub on /boot (/dev/sda3).

Running preupgrade it initially failed with /boot is too small, then, without any warning, had overwritten my MBR so it was completely unbootable.  No idea why it didn't proceed with installation but proceeded to overwrite something it had no business touching.

Booted the W7 DVD and chose Startup Repair to get the MBR back and everything was fine.

Cleaned up some space from /boot and tried the preupgrade which successfully ran to completion upon which rebooting presented me with the familiar "no boot device found".

Ran the W7 Startup Repair and could successfully boot Windows 7 and F12.

This issue clearly hasn't been fixed.

Comment 16 Will Woods 2009-11-19 16:30:55 UTC
As mentioned above, it doesn't overwrite the MBR - preupgrade doesn't touch your MBR. And it specifically directs anaconda not to touch it either.

So this sounds more like the mysterious long-standing GRUB-explodey bug - see bug 450143 - or some other unknown problem. But - I'll say it again - neither preupgrade nor anaconda should be manipulating your MBR in any way.

Comment 17 Greg 2009-11-20 07:20:15 UTC
So, how does this explain preupgrade/anaconda "appearing" to render my HDD "unbootable" even when it hasn't actually started the upgrade?  

I don't get any grub prompts.  I get the BIOS informing me that there are no bootable partitions.

Comment 18 Eugene Kanter 2009-12-03 20:58:54 UTC
I just got the same non bootable MBR upgrading from 11 to 12.
MBR was booting Windows XP. I boot Linux by NT loader.
What is interesting that on the same exact box upgrade from 9 to 11 went fine.

Comment 19 Bug Zapper 2010-04-27 13:51:41 UTC
This message is a reminder that Fedora 11 is nearing its end of life.
Approximately 30 (thirty) days from now Fedora will stop maintaining
and issuing updates for Fedora 11.  It is Fedora's policy to close all
bug reports from releases that are no longer maintained.  At that time
this bug will be closed as WONTFIX if it remains open with a Fedora 
'version' of '11'.

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to a later Fedora version prior to Fedora 11's end of life.

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Comment 20 Bug Zapper 2010-06-28 12:09:19 UTC
Fedora 11 changed to end-of-life (EOL) status on 2010-06-25. Fedora 11 is 
no longer maintained, which means that it will not receive any further 
security or bug fix updates. As a result we are closing this bug.

If you can reproduce this bug against a currently maintained version of 
Fedora please feel free to reopen this bug against that version.

Thank you for reporting this bug and we are sorry it could not be fixed.


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