[bug #37781] grub fails to find final partition sda10 bu UUID

[J.J. Green]

URL:
  <http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?37781>

                 Summary: grub fails to find final partition sda10 bu UUID
                 Project: GNU GRUB
            Submitted by: jjg
            Submitted on: Tue 20 Nov 2012 10:14:47 GMT
                Category: Booting
                Severity: Major
                Priority: 5 - Normal
              Item Group: Software Error
                  Status: None
                 Privacy: Public
             Assigned to: None
         Originator Name: J.J. Green
        Originator Email: address@hidden
             Open/Closed: Open
         Discussion Lock: Any
                 Release: 
                 Release: 1.97
         Reproducibility: Every Time
         Planned Release: None

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Details:

Hi all, 

I discovered an odd problem with Grub2 on an old IBM laptop 
(560Z) running Debian squeeze which seems to be related to Grub2
finding final or high numbered (msdos) partitions by UUID.  

The problem started on an upgrade from Grub to Grub2, the symptoms
being a minute delay "Welcome to grub", then "cannot find
partition" for a few seconds and then the boot menu.  Boot then
proceeded as normal, but without the specified GFXMODE.

After much playing around I find that the problem seems to be
the line

  prepare_grub_to_access_device `${grub_probe} --target=device
"${GRUB_FONT}"`

in /etc/grub.d/00_header, leading to a line like

    search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root <UUID>

in /boot/grub/grub.cfg.  It seems that this search fails, so
the subsequent loadfont fails, so the GFXMODE is not enabled.
I have confirmed the the <UUID> is correct, at least it is
the same as that returned by blkid.

The partition (mounted on /usr) is a little unusual in that it 
is sda10 which is the last partition on the (40GB) disk.  It 
occurs to me that there might be a fencepost error in the UUID 
partition identification code, but I couldn't see anything on a 
quick look around.  Perhaps someone more knowlegable about the 
codebase would know where to look for such a problem.

I have fixed the problem on my machine (copying the font to 
/boot/grub and modifying 00_header to search there), but I'd be 
happy to provide further info and run tests etc.

Best wishes 

Jim




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