Re: Bug#390473: grub2: menuentry stanza doesn't accept $ { } in variable substitutions

[Luca Capello]

Hello!

Again, forwarding to grub-devel, but setting M-F-T and R-T to the bug,
Robert and myself.

On Wed, 25 Oct 2006 19:49:49 +0200, Robert Millan wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 24, 2006 at 11:21:05PM +0200, Luca Capello wrote:
>> > On Sat, Oct 14, 2006 at 09:36:57PM +0200, Robert Millan wrote:
>> [something already present in the bug report]
>> >> According to upstream (IRC), this behaviour is consistent with
>> >> GRUB2 having its own variable support (and namespace..).  So you
>> >> really need to use this new syntax (I'll take this into account
>> >> for my work on update-grub2).
>> >> 
>> >> Can we close this bug now?
>> 
>> While the original bug can be considered close, the boot panic
>> remains, as I explained in my first post:
>> On Sun, 01 Oct 2006 15:54:00 +0200, Luca Capello wrote:
>> > After a `grub-install /dev/hda` and a reboot, grub2 entered in a
>> > panic state at boot.  Hopefully, the panic is reproducible, even
>> > on qemu: create the following stanza (you can substitute $ with a
>> > second { ):
>> >
>> >     menuentry "test" { $ }
>> >
>
> That's because of syntax error.  Both $ and { are reserved
> characters and must be used consistently.

I agree on this, but apart from the boot panic the main problem is the
lack of documentation, either upstream (including the wiki) and in the
Debian package: nowhere $ and { are described as reserved characters.

Obviously, the bug can hit only a very limited subset of users, the
one that want to test grub2 with GNU/Hurd.

> AFAICT, upstream doesn't consider this a bug.  If you disagree, can
> you take this up with them?

I haven't receive any public answer from upstream and I cannot
understand why this won't be a bug: grub-install doesn't show any
error when installing such a config file, resulting in the boot panic,
which IMHO is a real problem.

I won't close this bug until a clear solution will be taken: this
could be a (big) warning somewhere about reserved characters
(primarily upstream, but specifically in the NEWS.Debian or
README.Debian could be OK, too) or a technical solution which will
avoid the boot panic.

Thx, bye,
Gismo / Luca

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