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Description of problem: When upgrading from F15 to F16 using preupgrade, anaconda replaces the grub bootloader with grub2. But on systems where grub2 won't work (due to small/nonexistent embedding area), this breaks booting and disables the system. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): Anaconda 16.25 grub2 1.99-13.fc16 How reproducible: Update a F15 system with a system disk partitioned in a way not supported by grub2. My example system is partitioned as follows: Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 * 63 2097214 1048576 83 Linux /dev/sda2 8241345 286744184 139251420 83 Linux /dev/sda3 2104515 8241344 3068415 82 Linux swap / Solaris Steps to Reproduce: 1. on F15, run "preupgrade" to F16 2. reboot 3. Actual results: Reboot fails with "file not found" error issued by grub (after boot menu appears). Expected results: Preferred result would be for system to boot. In the absence of that possibility, the second-best option would be for anaconda to either not upgrade grub2 or refuse to upgrade system altogether. Third best option, perhaps, run grub2-install with using blocklists (see below). Unreliable is still better than simply broken. Regardless, just killing the upgraded system (actual result) must be one of the worst possible choices here. Additional info: Problem apparently originates with grub2's inability to find sufficient space for its core.img file on legacy-partitioned disks. grub2-install produces something like this: /sbin/grub2-setup: warn: Your embedding area is unusually small. core.img won't fit in it.. /sbin/grub2-setup: warn: Embedding is not possible. GRUB can only be installed in this setup by using blocklists. However, blocklists are UNRELIABLE and their use is discouraged.. /sbin/grub2-setup: error: will not proceed with blocklists.
I have seen this on ~10 boxen now. Must boot from Fedora 15 DVD[1] in rescue mode and run: $ chroot /mnt/sysimage $ grub2-install --recheck --no-floppy --force /dev/sda After that, every system has been working just fine. Why will anaconda not fall back to use the --force option when it's sure not to work without the option? [1]: Another issue: Fedora *16* DVD in rescue mode don't find the installed system.
I had the same problem, and cured it with: mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/hd grub2-install --recheck --boot-directory=/mnt/hd/boot /dev/sda Unfortunately, it took me about a month to get around to finding the solution, and in the meantime I spilled water on my laptop. The F16 box was its filesystem backup, so I may have lots a bunch of data due to this machine being down. 8( I just have the Fedora installed on /dev/sda1 with the entire filesystem mounted on / including /boot and everything else all in one partition. (I like keeping things simple.)
I had the same problem. The following explain what successful solution I found. I think that it would be great if next Fedora releases either fix the issue or at less warn at install/upgrade time. > /dev/sda1 * 63 2097214 1048576 83 Linux Like in your case, my first partition began too early, at sector 63, which used to be default sector proposed by fdisk, and leave only 32kB to install the boot loader in the MBR. My first partition was my /boot partition, thus it was small and I was able to backup it, destroy it, and create it again at sector 2047 instead of 63. 2047 is the new fdisk default value and leaves 1 MB to the boot loader, which is enough for GRUB2. After recreating the partition I restored the data and installed GRUB2 without problems (grub2-install /dev/sda). I did everything using rescue mode on F16 DVD. This is rather long because you have to reboot at less twice (to reload partitions table) but works well. What took me several hours was not to resize the partition, but to guess what was happening. To be frank my problem was slightly harder because my /boot was not an ext2 partition but rather an ext2 partition over software raid device, hence I had to recreate partitions on both sda2 and sdb2 and then install GRUB twice. But in your case this is irrelevant. I personnaly think that Anaconda/preupgrade should warn when GRUB2 does not install because the MBR is too small. I performed the upgrade with a DVD and was only warned that "the boot loader did not install" with no clue about the problem or the way to solve it.
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Fedora 16 changed to end-of-life (EOL) status on 2013-02-12. Fedora 16 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.