http://www.mail-archive.com/bug-grub@gnu.org/msg10770.html

Grub should not be installed in an xfs filesystem.

In my opinion, the installer should be changed to detect the attempt,
and prevent/reject it.

CC: (none) => davidwhodgins

Sry I forgot to tell that grub is installed in the MBR and my / is on XFS.

@ André

We're waiting for this bug to be reproduced. 

In MDV, it was the same: installing grub while installing MDV didn't work well, but afterwards, in rescuemode, you could install it properly? 

Do you have a link to the MDV bugreport?

Keywords: (none) => NEEDINFO
CC: (none) => marja11, thierry.vignaud
Source RPM: (none) => drakx-installer-stage2

Found it, resolved as won't fix, as the xfs module and jfs would take up
too much room on the iso. It states jfs.ko is 160K and xfs is 470K

On my current system, jfs.ko.gz is 101K and xfs.ko.gz is 350K.

This seems strange to me, as the modules obviously exist in the kernel
that's installed onto the system, or reinstalling the boot loader
from rescue mode wouldn't fix the problem.

What's different in the installation of the boot loader during the
install, compared to rescue mode?

Maybe it's related to the memory used by the installer, free in the rescue mode ?
Or maybe the installer just loads certain standard modules, and rescue mode loads those actually used on the disk, avoiding those not used ?

A workaround would be to reformat the root partition to ext4, which has most if not all of the advantages of xfs (journalised, extents).
And is sure to be always available.
Or a separate boot partition could be used, again formatted as ext4.

CC: (none) => andre999mga

@ andré blais: thanks, if you hadn't reacted, I wouldn't have found this:

@ andré baer: Dave was right. Wikipedia is clearer to me than the link he gave:

In Wikipedia it says:

XFS was first merged into mainline Linux in version 2.4, making it almost universally available on Linux systems. Installation programs for the Arch, Debian, Fedora, openSUSE, Gentoo, Kate OS, Mandriva, Slackware, Ubuntu, VectorLinux and Zenwalk Linux distributions all offer XFS as a choice of filesystem, but few of these let the user create XFS for the /boot filesystems due to deficiencies and unpredictable behavior in GRUB, often the default bootloader.

If those distro's couldn't get this to work, chances are minimal we will manage.

Also taking into account that we are short on developers, I'm changing this bug report into a request to give a warning when choosing for XFS during install.

Why did you choose XFS?

Keywords: NEEDINFO => USABILITY
Summary: grub error after install on a XFS root filesystem => Give warning when a user chooses XFS for partition containing /boot (or block this choice?)

Hi sry for my late answer.

My bootloader is in the MBR and with Slackware and LILO (all versions from 10.2), SuSe and Mandriva 2011 it works to use a complete XFS Filesystem without a special /boot partition (I do not have a /boot partition)

After reinstalling the bootloader from rescuemode (Mageia 1, Mandriva 2007-2010.2) all is ok.

I choosed the XFS filesystem because it was the fastet filesystem  on my old machine and it works great.

Sometimes I used the Ext4 on my new Computer but it is terrible.
Corrupted filesystem and it is slower on normal work.
I know that Ext4 is in some cases fast but I use my Computer only for desktop-use and don't need the features for server...

@ André Baer

Thx for explaining why you prefer XFS.

I removed "(or block this choice?)" from the summary

Assignee: bugsquad => thierry.vignaud
Summary: Give warning when a user chooses XFS for partition containing /boot (or block this choice?) => Give warning when a user chooses XFS for partition containing /boot

Sry do you mean to remove the choice for a XFS / partition in the installer?

A popup with informations about XFS as a / partition were good :)

(In reply to comment #9)
> Sry do you mean to remove the choice for a XFS / partition in the installer?
>
No, not at all, that's why I removed that option from the summary after you explained why you use XFS
 
> A popup with informations about XFS as a / partition were good :)

Exactly, I agree completely, therefore the summary now only says: "Give warning when a user chooses XFS for partition containing /boot"

Ok thank your for helping / adding this information to the installer.

Giving warnings "hey, this may not work" isn't user friendly.

Pixel fixed it long ago: https://qa.mandriva.com/show_bug.cgi?id=33267
We should try to understand why it doesn't work anymore.
We may just not have xfs_freeze anymore

Please attach your /root/drakx/report.bug.gz

Keywords: USABILITY => NEEDINFO
Summary: Give warning when a user chooses XFS for partition containing /boot => grub error after install on a XFS root filesystem

No thats not very user friendly but I can't fix this problem.
The installer is not hanging like in the old Mandriva bug.
The only thing is the missing bootloader after install.

I'm currently running Mandriva 2011 for testing/playing but I have installed
Mageia in VirtualBox with the same problem.

So I mounted the partitions in rescuemode to copy /root/drakx
after that I user rescue-gui to reinstall the bootloader and it works now.

I hope the report.bug.gz is ok.

Created attachment 979 [details]
Here is my report.bug file

This is from my VirtualBox installation.

That shows two things:
- it failed to run xfs_freeze
- grub then complains it misses some files

Ok

is it possible to fix this bug?

Installer was actually lacking xfs_freeze, thus failing to run it.
Could you try installing Mageia Cauldron from your favorite mirror?
It should work better.

Thx I will try it in the next 2-3 weeks on VirtualBox
because I need a faster connection than 3g.

Works for me

Status: NEW => RESOLVED
Resolution: (none) => FIXED