On Wed 05 Apr 2023 at 07:03:41 (-0700), Peter Ehlert wrote: > Debian Bookworm RC 1 installer > Damned nice, the improvements are appreciated.
I ran rc1 in my usual manner, and the only difference I noticed was the one extra question about non-free firmware, to which I replied yes. (There may well be improvements under the hood, so to speak.) Oh, and the initrd is somewhat larger, as per usual. > using the new debian-bookworm-DI-rc1-amd64-netinst.iso > Legacy install, GPT partition I assume Legacy means BIOS booting. Same here, but only one disk. > graphic install, manual partitioning > Mate Desktop (others were deselected) Non-graphical here, a suitable partition existed, and only standard and SSH server software was installed. > WiFi firmware: Untested as this machine is a 2006-vintage mini-tower lacking wifi. [ snipped narrative of later network-switching ] > Boot Loader: > all disk drives were detected, however the one with the bios_grub > partition was highlighted I can't recall seeing anything other than the first item highlighted, ie "Enter device manually", at least with the non-graphical installer in expert mode. I selected the (sole) hard drive, item 2. The only remaining item was the USB stick containing the installer ISO. As expected nowadays, when the machine rebooted, the Grub menu had only two lines, both pointing to the newly installed system. (I hadn't made any attempt to counteract GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER during my installation.) So Grub was correctly installed in the MBR, and the rest of Grub occupied d400 bytes of /dev/sda1 (the 3MB BIOS boot partition on the single disk). > ============= > second try, using the debian-live-bkworm-DI-rc1-amd64-mate.iso > same machine and again Legacy install, GPT partition > however I did NOT install from the live session: > I chose to go directly to install rather than the Calamares installer > then manual partitioning > > Boot Loader: > all drives were detected, however the one with the bios_grub partition > was NOT highlighted, but I did select it. > GRUB was Not properly installed, my former grub menu was still active. How did you determine that it was the previous menu. Wouldn't it look just the same? > *** I tried a second time, same as above being super careful, same result. > > I then booted with my default system, ran grub-install /dev/sde && > update-grub > then "new" system was on my boot menu. > then booted and it ran as expected. Which method did you use to boot the "default" system (which I assume is bullseye, in a different partition on one or other of the disks), in view of the rather sparse menu from grub.cfg on the new system? > back to the WiFi dongle, again the obscure firmware was properly installed > > Is this a Bug or a user/hardware issue? Presumably we are now back to talking about Grub. If you still have access to the bookworm system, you can check whether it claimed to have completed installing Grub successfully. You should see lines like: grub-installer: info: Installing grub on '/dev/sda' grub-installer: info: grub-install does not support --no-floppy grub-installer: info: Running chroot /target grub-install --force "/dev/sda" grub-installer: Installing for i386-pc platform. grub-installer: Installation finished. No error reported. grub-installer: info: grub-install ran successfully in /var/log/installer/syslog. You could install and run boot-info-script, which provides details of how the system boots, particularly where the MBR code looks for the BIOS boot partition (ie core.img). BTW do any other disks in this machine have BIOS boot partitions? (I've one on all my internal disks.) But as far as we're concerned, I think more information is needed, like what disks there are on the system, which disk the BIOS is reading the MBR from, the final listing from the partitioner, particularly any BIOS boot partitions, and so on. Without all that in the narrative, there's no telling whether it's a bug or not. Cheers, David.
