Bug#425367: grub-update freeze system on xfs root

[Olleg Samoylov]

Package: grub
Version: 0.97-27
Severity: grave

I prefer use xfs as root file system. grub-install always freeze total
system on linux installation or grub update. Manual installation grub
always fine.

I tried investigate script. Heh, mates, there are not logic at all.

# XFS needs special magic
xfs_frozen=false
if which xfs_freeze > /dev/null ; then
  cat << EOF
Due to a bug in xfs_freeze, the following command might produce a segmentation
fault when ${grubdir} is not in an XFS filesystem. This error is harmless and
can be ignored.
EOF
  if xfs_freeze -f ${grubdir} ; then xfs_frozen=true ; fi
fi

I can't undestand, why do you need freeze total filesystem? Do you plan write t o stage1,2 or change it location in the same time? Even in this case your freeze will not well, because location of files will be changed later and grub-install will be had to rerun. If you want prevent writing in this files better use linux lock on files, rather then freeze total filesytem. No matter, this freeze is not needed at all.

Later you run:

$grub_shell --batch $no_floppy --device-map=$device_map <<EOF >$log_file

And you try to write to file in the same filesystem. Bingo, script is locked. And after killing script whole filesystem remain be freezed. You will not be able even to login in linux with such root filesystem. Even soft reboot will not work. Only hard reset button will help.

And very strange method to detect, when filesystem must be freezed. There may be situations when filesystem is xfs, but have not xfs utils or there are xfs utils but filesystem is not xfs. 

I insist, all code about xfs filesystem is wrong, unnessesary and must be removed.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: lenny/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (990, 'testing'), (500, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.18-4-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=ru_RU.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=ru_RU.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

-- no debconf information