Re: [Dragora-users] (bug) failed to install grub with ext4 root partition

[Matías Fonzo]

On Sun, 31 Mar 2024 14:03:44 +0900
Jing Luo via Dragora-users <dragora-users@nongnu.org> wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> TL;DR: Dragora 3.0 beta 2 ships with GRUB 2.06 that fails to recognize 
> ext4 root partition, it should be upgraded to 2.12.
> 
> I tried to install Dragora on a qemu VM. I used the whole disk for the 
> root partition, with MBR and bootable flag. Then I formatted the root 
> partition as ext4 like I always do. Then grub-install failed.

Correct, this is a bug in GNU Grub, and it should be upgraded to the latest 
version...

From https://notabug.org/dragora/dragora/issues/80

"
[..]
The solution is to either create a seperate (300M - 1G) filesystem for /boot 
and format it as ext3, or use ext3 for your root filesystem.
[..]
"
 
> grub-install: error: unknown filesystem
> 
> I believe this is the exact bug reported here [1].
> 
> [1] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=866603
> 
> If I follow the workaround in [2] to disable an ext4 feature 
> "metadata_csum_seed", yes, grub-install would succeed, but only grub 
> could only be installed on MBR, not superblock:
> 
> # (after bind mount and chroot)
> # grub-install --taget=i386-pc --boot-directory=/boot 
> --directory=/usr/lib/grub/i386-pc /dev/sda1
> grub-install: warning: File system ext2 doesn't support embedding.
> grub-install: warning: Embedding is not possible. GRUB can only be 
> installed in this setup by using blocklists. However, blocklists are 
> UNRELIABLE and their use is discouraged..
> grub-install: error: will not proceed with blocklists.
> 
> After installing grub to MBR, unfortunately after reboot, there was a 
> "kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: unable to mount root fs on 
> unknown-block(0,0)". If I re-enable "metadata_csum_seed", then grub 
> couldn't boot (unknown filesystem).
> 
> [2] 
> https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/grub-related-issue-with-alienbob%27s-current-64-bit-isos-clean-fresh-install-4175722697/#post6417052
> 
> This is so unfortunate I ended up with a broken install :( But there 
> seems to be a patch [3] that can solve this. Or better: upgrade GRUB to 
> 2.12 where the patch was merged.
> 
> [3] 
> https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/grub.git/patch/?id=7fd5feff97c4b1f446f8fcf6d37aca0c64e7c763
> 
> -- 
> Jing Luo
> About me: https://jing.rocks/about/
> PGP Fingerprint: 4E09 8D19 00AA 3F72 1899 2614 09B3 316E 13A1 1EFC


-- 
Matías Fonzo <selk@dragora.org>