Description of problem: At present grub2 cannot be installed to a partition during installation of mga3. However if the installation is aborted at the point where it fails the installation is bootable without problem using from grub2: menuentry 'Mageia-3 Beta 2 net' { search --no-floppy --label --set=root mga3b2net multiboot /boot/grub2/i386-pc/core.img ...since the default grub2 package install has already written core.img to /boot/grub2/i386-pc. Would it not be better to just skip the bootloader install step if the root partition is chosen as the destination for grub2 ? Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: Steps to Reproduce: 1. 2. 3.
Blocks: (none) => 416
Should ther be an option to install GRUB2 (loader part or all) to a USB stick in those cases? (I suppose one can to that already) Perhaps an explanation text in the installer would go a long way. Can grub2 be installed on an ntfs patrition (the same one Win7/8 usually creates?) I realize grub2 is probably best with it's own /boot partition as the first partition, but very few folks are going to repartition/format their drives to suit grub2. What are the options?
CC: (none) => gjmcgee
(In reply to Barry Jackson from comment #0) Thierry, There are two options here: 1. Do nothing and allow users to multi-boot using core.img that was created during package install. By "do nothing" I mean to make the tool accept the option to use a partition (not use MBR) but exit without attempting to "grub2-install" anything. 2. Use "grub2-install --force" to install grub2 to a partition using blocklists, which is what I suspect it is currently attempting to do (but without the --force) and failing. Option #1 may be booted certainly from grub2 and grub, and AFAICT does all that most users need to multi-boot the system. Option #2 does the same as grub legacy, with the same risk (albeit small) that the blocklists may become invalid due to file movement. Since core.img is larger than the equivalent file in legacy, then I guess the risk is slightly higher, also IIUC some filesystems do not have the embedding space for this method. I personally favour #1 Barry
After testing #2 for a couple of days in a VM it died. #1 continued to work correctly. Whether the VM environment made it more prone to the blocklists problem I don't know, but this does tend to re-enforce my preference for option 1. Re-installing #2 again with grub2-install --force /dev/sda6 restored it to working again as before, but it does seem flakey compared to #1 which I have used without issue for years.
Fixed in SVN
Status: NEW => RESOLVEDResolution: (none) => FIXED
First tests in VM look good - no problems so far :)
I just tried an install using the i586 RC dvd, selecting sdb5 for the partition to install grub2 (the / filesystem, the only partition used in this install). It appeared to succeed, but I can't boot the install, using the gag boot loader. Looking at /dev/sdb5 with hexedit the first 1024 bytes are all hex'00.
Status: RESOLVED => REOPENEDCC: (none) => davidwhodginsResolution: FIXED => (none)
Created attachment 3764 [details] Compressed report.bug I don't see any error messages. * running: grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg with root /mnt * running: grub2-install --grub-setup=/bin/true /dev/sdb5 with root /mnt * step "summary" took: 0:02:44
This is expected. We do not actually install grub2 at start of partition. See with Barry.
Yes, the installer creates /boot/grub2/i386-pc/core.img in the system but does not write anything to the partition boot sector, as that would involve using blocklists which are unreliable. See /usr/share/doc/grub2/README.Mageia for how to add an entry in a grub menu.lst to multi-boot into core.img. It may be possible to use a similar approach with Gag, I really don't know, it's years since I looked at it. I use grub2 as a 'master' bootloader in a small 50MB partition and to boot into Mageia with grub2 using core.img, an entry in a manually created grub.cfg (using labels) would be:- menuentry 'Mageia-3' { search --no-floppy --label --set=root mageia-3 multiboot /boot/grub2/i386-pc/core.img } It is possible to write to the PBR using grub2 and blocklists, but it is not recommended and from tests that I have done it has proved unreliable. For this reason I feel that simply generating /boot/grub2/i386-pc/core.img is the correct approach, this is confirmed by upstream.
Ok, so if grub2 is installed to a partition, it's only suitable for chain loading from a grub/grub2 mbr installation, not a third party utility such as gag or smb. Something to note for the errata.
While testing LiveDVD installer I tried to install grub2 on /dev/sda9 (my / partition). It failed with message "ERROR: 'script' failed for grub2-2.00-41.mga3.x86_64" photograph: http://stormi.lautre.net/fichiers/mageia/grub2.jpg
That's a different issue. Please open another bug report, against grub2
(In reply to Samuel VERSCHELDE from comment #11) > While testing LiveDVD installer I tried to install grub2 on /dev/sda9 (my / > partition). It failed with message "ERROR: 'script' failed for > grub2-2.00-41.mga3.x86_64" > > photograph: http://stormi.lautre.net/fichiers/mageia/grub2.jpg That is https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9334
(In reply to Dave Hodgins from comment #10) > Ok, so if grub2 is installed to a partition, it's only suitable > for chain loading from a grub/grub2 mbr installation, not a > third party utility such as gag or smb. > > Something to note for the errata. Maybe - I suppose, although it's not an error. We cannot be expected to support all 3rd party bootloaders :\ There is a note in the release notes which I will think about expanding a little. Closing again as fixed as there is nothing else to be done here.
Status: REOPENED => RESOLVEDResolution: (none) => FIXED