Bug#462701: #462701 - grub: savedefault menu.lst option results in unbootable system
From the bug report: Robert Could you provide a suggested text? Ross Since I don't understand what's going on, I'm afraid I can't. Here's a suggested wording: The savedefault option on unclean filesystems will cause grub to fail to boot the kernel. The savedefault=false option will avoid this problem. The alternative workaround is to edit the grub menu interactively on boot. Steve Parker [EMAIL PROTECTED] ... I've suffered from this bug a few times, and finally had to look it up. Glad to see it's being fixed. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Bug#462701: #462701 - grub: savedefault menu.lst option results in unbootable system
On Fri, 2008-03-14 at 00:34 +, Steve Parker wrote: From the bug report: Robert Could you provide a suggested text? Ross Since I don't understand what's going on, I'm afraid I can't. Here's a suggested wording: The savedefault option on unclean filesystems will cause grub to fail to boot the kernel. The savedefault=false option will avoid this problem. The alternative workaround is to edit the grub menu interactively on boot. Is this the meaning of the final sentence: If you set savedefault=true and find that your system is unbootable, you can start it by editing the grub menu interactively [how?] at boot time. ? Also, some of the earlier discussion seemed to imply this was a problem only with some file systems. Ross -- Ross Boylan wk: (415) 514-8146 185 Berry St #5700 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Dept of Epidemiology and Biostatistics fax: (415) 514-8150 University of California, San Francisco San Francisco, CA 94107-1739 hm: (415) 550-1062 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Bug#462701: #462701 - grub: savedefault menu.lst option results in unbootable system
Ross Boylan wrote: On Fri, 2008-03-14 at 00:34 +, Steve Parker wrote: From the bug report: Robert Could you provide a suggested text? Ross Since I don't understand what's going on, I'm afraid I can't. Here's a suggested wording: The savedefault option on unclean filesystems will cause grub to fail to boot the kernel. The savedefault=false option will avoid this problem. The alternative workaround is to edit the grub menu interactively on boot. Is this the meaning of the final sentence: If you set savedefault=true and find that your system is unbootable, you can start it by editing the grub menu interactively [how?] at boot time. ? Also, some of the earlier discussion seemed to imply this was a problem only with some file systems. Ross Setting savedefault=false in menu.lst is not possible if you are unable to boot the system. If you cannot boot the system, then an interactive session with Grub is necessary (press e at the Grub prompt) to disable a per-item savedefault setting. I can confirm this behaviour with Reiserfs 3.6.19 (Debian Sid); XFS and other journalling filesystems seem to have the same issue, which is understandable; Grub can read unclean journalled filesystems, but cannot do the log-replay which is needed before a write can be achieved. I suspect that this feature will only work reliably with ext2/vfat or whatever other non-logging filesystems Grub supports. Personally, I would say that Grub's savedefault setting should be seen as a preference, not a requirement, and that if it fails to write to the filesystem, it should continue to pass control to the kernel on that filesystem for it to deal with the unclean filesystem. -- Steve Parker [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Bug#462701: 462701: grub: savedefault menu.lst option results in unbootable system
On Fri, Feb 29, 2008 at 10:25:17AM -0800, Ross Boylan wrote: I saw the note about this in the changelog, but can't find many other signs of it. My menu.lst doesn't have a savedefault variable (the changelog says it exists), perhaps because that only appears in newly generated ones? And I don't see an indication in README.Debian.gz or NEWS.Debian.gz about what the implications of using savedefault are. Beyond the fact that it sometimes breaks, I still don't understand what the issue is. It might be helpful to put a few lines in README.Debian, and perhaps the news too. Could you provide a suggested text? -- Robert Millan GPLv2 I know my rights; I want my phone call! DRM What use is a phone call… if you are unable to speak? (as seen on /.) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Bug#462701: 462701: grub: savedefault menu.lst option results in unbootable system
On Tue, 2008-03-04 at 15:33 +0100, Robert Millan wrote: On Fri, Feb 29, 2008 at 10:25:17AM -0800, Ross Boylan wrote: I saw the note about this in the changelog, but can't find many other signs of it. My menu.lst doesn't have a savedefault variable (the changelog says it exists), perhaps because that only appears in newly generated ones? And I don't see an indication in README.Debian.gz or NEWS.Debian.gz about what the implications of using savedefault are. Beyond the fact that it sometimes breaks, I still don't understand what the issue is. It might be helpful to put a few lines in README.Debian, and perhaps the news too. Could you provide a suggested text? Since I don't understand what's going on, I'm afraid I can't. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Bug#462701: 462701: grub: savedefault menu.lst option results in unbootable system
I saw the note about this in the changelog, but can't find many other signs of it. My menu.lst doesn't have a savedefault variable (the changelog says it exists), perhaps because that only appears in newly generated ones? And I don't see an indication in README.Debian.gz or NEWS.Debian.gz about what the implications of using savedefault are. Beyond the fact that it sometimes breaks, I still don't understand what the issue is. It might be helpful to put a few lines in README.Debian, and perhaps the news too. Ross -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Bug#462701: 462701: grub: savedefault menu.lst option results in unbootable system
I have experienced this problem with grub failing to load after an unclean shutdown. It happened on a cluster running debian etch. Whenever there is a power outage, *some* nodes fail to boot. Connecting to their console shows that they hang when loading grub. I had got around the issue by just bypassing grub altogether and pxe-booting the nodes from the server. Before that, either a grub-install, or a journal recovery seemed to fix the system till the next unclean mount. -- Raj Kiran Grandhi -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Bug#462701: 462701: grub: savedefault menu.lst option results in unbootable system
Could you explain a bit more what the problem is, and what the solution is? I have a reiser boot partition, and so am very interested. However, I can't quite tell what the problem is (beyond fails to boot--why does it fail to boot?), why the combination of reiser and savedefault is particularly bad, or how to fix things if it is bad. I assume savedefault causes a write to the disk, which could be problematic if it wasn't unmounted cleanly. But I would think that the worst case would be that the write was lost. Alternately, if grub just can't handle dirty unmounts, I can't imagine what editing in the command line could remedy the problem. Although I think I've had some unclean shutdowns, I've so far been able to boot with grub + reiserfs boot partition. Since the boot partition is on an LVM logical volume carved out of an encrypted physical volume there are a couple layers of indirection; perhaps those protect from this bug. Thanks. Ross -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
