Package: grub-pc Version: 1.98+20100804-14+squeeze1 My basic problem is that grub-install silently does not work without specifying '--modules=part_msdos' manually on a loop device for a virtual machine raw disk image.
When using '--modules=part_msdos' it works just fine but clearly that should not be necessary. I have tracked this down to # grub-probe --target=partmap --device /dev/XXX outputting _nothing_ in many cases (also for a GPT partitioned hard disk) but in particular with this very simple msdos partition table for which I've attached the MBR. Please consider this self-contained test case: ======================================================================== % dd if=/dev/zero of=test.raw bs=1024 seek=64000000 count=0 % dd if=msdos-disk.mbr of=test.raw conv=notrunc # losetup -f test.raw # /usr/sbin/grub-probe -v --target=partmap --device /dev/loop0 /usr/sbin/grub-probe: info: the size of hd0 is 3907029168. /usr/sbin/grub-probe: info: the size of hd0 is 3907029168. /usr/sbin/grub-probe: info: the size of hd0 is 3907029168. /usr/sbin/grub-probe: info: the size of hd0 is 3907029168. /usr/sbin/grub-probe: info: the size of hd0 is 3907029168. /usr/sbin/grub-probe: info: the size of hd0 is 3907029168. /usr/sbin/grub-probe: info: the size of hd0 is 3907029168. /usr/sbin/grub-probe: info: the size of hd0 is 3907029168. /usr/sbin/grub-probe: info: opening /dev/loop0. /usr/sbin/grub-probe: info: the size of /dev/loop0 is 128000000. /usr/sbin/grub-probe: info: no partition map found for /dev/loop0. The partition table is very simple and was created with sfdisk: # sfdisk -l -uS /dev/loop0 Disk /dev/loop0: cannot get geometry Disk /dev/loop0: 7967 cylinders, 255 heads, 63 sectors/track Units = sectors of 512 bytes, counting from 0 Device Boot Start End #sectors Id System /dev/loop0p1 * 1008 59890319 59889312 83 Linux /dev/loop0p2 59890320 64998989 5108670 83 Linux /dev/loop0p3 0 - 0 0 Empty /dev/loop0p4 0 - 0 0 Empty ======================================================================== Thanks for looking at this, Wolfram Gloger
msdos-disk.mbr
Description: MBR which fails to detect in grub-probe