Bug#345931: grub 0.97 doesn't work on several machines

[Frans Pop]

retitle 345931 System fails to boot after updating boot sector from grub interactive shell
thanks

I have managed to reproduce this in vmware using the following procedure:
- new Sarge install (has grub 0.95+cvs20040624-17)
- change sources list to unstable and upgrade

After grub is upgraded (to 0.97-4), but without re-installing its boot sector,
the system reboots without problem.

Now there are two methods to reinstall the grub boot sector to the new
version.

1) Run the grub-install script
# grub-install /dev/sda1
Installation finished. No error reported.
This is the contents of the device map /boot/grub/device.map.
Check if this is correct or not. If any of the lines is incorrect,
fix it and re-run the script 'grub-install'.

(hd0) /dev/sda
# reboot
=> system reboots without any problems

2) Run the grub shell interactively as in the original report
# grub
grub> find /boot/grub/menu.lst
 (hd0,0)
grub> root (hd0,0)
 Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
grub> setup (hd0)

 Checking if "/boot/grub/stage1" exists... no
 Checking if "/grub/stage1" exists... yes
 Checking if "/grub/stage2" exists... yes
 Checking if "/grub/e2fs_stage1_5" exists... yes
 Running "embed /grub/e2fs_stage1_5 (hd0)"...  16 sectors are embedded.
succeeded
 Running "install /grub/stage1 (hd0) (hd0)1+16 p (hd0,0)/grub/stage2
/grub/menu..lst"... succeeded
Done.
grub> quit

# reboot
=> Grub menu is not shown (screen remains blank); system fails to boot

Conclusions:
- grub-install does the right thing
- the setup command in the grub interactive shell checks if the stage files
  exist, but apparently its setup command fails to check if they are
  compatible with the current version of grub

I will keep the image I created this way in vmware for a while in case
additional information is wanted.

Cheers,
Frans Pop