Bug#466598: grub-pc chokes on grub.cfg, hangs before menu

[Robert Millan]

Hi Barry,

On Wed, Feb 20, 2008 at 09:30:36AM -0500, Barry Schatz wrote:
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> I'm sorry, I gave you attitude when I was frustrated. You didn't deserve
> that.

Apologise accepted.

> I didn't edit grub.cfg, and this is not the first time I installed
> grub-pc. I've been using grub-pc for a few months. The edits I did do
> consisted of commenting out lines. I don't know the syntax, but I
> understand enough to figure out what a conditional block looks like.

It is easy to make assumptions but the syntax is actually fragile.  While code
generated by update-grub is well-tested and known to work, some minor details
can break stuff unexpectedly.

So please, generate grub.cfg with update-grub and try again.  There _was_
a bug in the parser in an older release, but if you hit that all you have to
do is grub-install the latest version;  no need to hand-edit grub.cfg.

> If I wait a bit longer I get a menu.  The menu is slow to the point of
> unresponsive, but I get a working system if I wait for it to pick the
> default.

So it works then?

> At this point I assume all of grub2 executes at ring 0 and the slowdown
> is due to virtualbox moving all of it to ring 1.

Could be.  There's really not much GRUB can do to slow down your system.  Either
it's using the CPU (fast) or calls the BIOS (slow or fast, who knows?).

-- 
Robert Millan

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<DRM> What use is a phone call… if you are unable to speak?
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