Bugreport grub-0.5.96

[U.Birkemeyer]

Installation problem with grub-0.5.96: Error 29: Disk write error
=================================================================

Hallo GRUB developers,
first of all, thanks and big hands for this great tool you developed.

I have a problem with the installation of grub-0.5.96 (error 29: disk write 
error).

The situation prior to the attempt to install grub-0.5.96:
I have a working installation of grub-0.5.95 on my ACER Travelmate 730TX 
notebook.
I built grub-0.5.95 and installed stage1 into the MBR of (hd0) and have
stage2 and the menu.lst on one of my Linux partitions (hd0,7). Everything is 
fine with grub-0.5.95.

The partition map (as reported by Linux fdisk) on my 20 GB harddisk is:

Harddisk /dev/hda: 255 Heads, 63 Sectors, 2432 Cylinders
Units: Cylinder with 16065 * 512 Bytes
 
Device     Boot   Begin       End   Blocks    ID  Filesystemtype
/dev/hda1   *         1       254   2040223+   b  Win95 FAT32
/dev/hda2           255       484   1847475   17  Hidden HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda3           485       700   1735020   a5  BSD/386
/dev/hda4           701      2432  13912290    f  Win95 Extend. (LBA)
/dev/hda5           701       960   2088418+   b  Win95 FAT32
/dev/hda6           961      1024    514048+   6  FAT16
/dev/hda7          1025      1280   2056288+  83  Linux
/dev/hda8          1281      1542   2104483+  83  Linux
/dev/hda9          1543      1797   2048256   83  Linux
/dev/hda10         1798      2052   2048256    b  Win95 FAT32 

After installation of grub-0.5.95 I installed W2k on (hd1) = /dev/hda2. This
did not overwrite the MBR (to my surprise) and the booting of W2k with the
command chainloader +1 is working without problems. Everything works fine with
grub-0.5.95. 

After I noticed your new version grub-0.5.96 I tried to install this the same
way as grub-0.5.95 but on commit of the command "install" (see end of
my menu.lst file) from the grub shell the Error 29: "Disk write error" is
reported. Since all the access rights of the grub-0.5.96 files are equal to the
grub-0.5.95 files and since I have no problems in repeating the grub-0.5.95
installation, I suspect an error in grub-0.5.96.

Maybe this report can help you to improve the grub software. Thanks for your 
great software tool.

Best regards
Uwe Birkemeyer (address@hidden)


Here is the contents of my menu.lst file:
#----------------------------------------------------------------------
# General commands
#----------------------------------------------------------------------
# Boot automatically after 30 secs.
timeout 30
# By default, boot the first entry.
default 0
# Fallback to the 3rd entry.
fallback 4
# Set colors normal highlight
color light-gray/blue black/cyan
#----------------------------------------------------------------------
# **0**  (hd0,0) = /dev/hda1     (hda5 - appl) (hda6 - home)
#----------------------------------------------------------------------
title Windows 98 SE
unhide (hd0,0)
hide (hd0,1)
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader  +1
makeactive
#----------------------------------------------------------------------
# **1**  (hd0,1) = /dev/hda2
#----------------------------------------------------------------------
title Windows 2000 Prof
unhide (hd0,1)
hide (hd0,0)
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
chainloader +1
makeactive
#----------------------------------------------------------------------
# **2**  (hd0,2) = /dev/hda3
#----------------------------------------------------------------------
title  FreeBSD 4.1
root   (hd0,2,a)
kernel /boot/loader
#----------------------------------------------------------------------
# **3**  (hd0,6) = /dev/hda7
#----------------------------------------------------------------------
title  Linux 2.2.14 SuSE 6.4
root (hd0,6)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda7
#----------------------------------------------------------------------
# **4**  (hd0,7) = /dev/hda8
#----------------------------------------------------------------------
title  Linux 2.2.16 SuSE 7.0
root (hd0,7)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda8
#----------------------------------------------------------------------
# **5** (hd0,8) = /dev/hda9
#----------------------------------------------------------------------
title  Linux 2.2.14 RedHat 6.2
root (hd0,8)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda9
#----------------------------------------------------------------------
# **x**  (hd0,7) = /dev/hda8  My installation command (from grub shell)
#----------------------------------------------------------------------
#title Install GRUB into the hard disk
#root    (hd0,7)
#install  (hd0,7)/usr/share/grub/boot/stage1  (hd0)  
(hd0,7)/usr/share/grub/boot/stage2  (hd0,7)/usr/share/grub/boot/menu.lst