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

[Jason Thomas]

close 345931
thanks

Hi,

grub-install copies the various stage* files into /boot/grub. grub shell
does not.

If you do not copy the stage* files then they will be incompatible with
the boot sector that is installed.

grub-install is the recommeneded method to install.

On Mon, Feb 06, 2006 at 02:55:05PM +0100, Frans Pop wrote:
> 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
> 
> 
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