Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 496952
preupgrade overwrite MBR instead of first partition on HDD
Last modified: 2014-01-21 18:09:16 EST
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:
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.
Created attachment 340626 [details] Added image for detail
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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