Bug#243835: grub-install hangs with xfs root/boot

[Joey Hess]

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Package: grub
Version: 0.93+cvs20031021-8
Severity: normal
Tags: d-i

The debian installer can install a system with / or /boot on XFS. When
it tries to install grub on such a system, the grub-install run hangs,
seemingly forever. The last thing output is "Probing devices to guess
BIOS drives." The cpu is pegged too. This has been reproduced on more
than one machine, and I found something that looked like the same
problem on google. I've seen it with both the 2.4.25 and 2.6.5 kernels.

We have put a guard in d-i to deal with this, it warns users that XFS
/boot (or root) will not work with grub. This is not an ideal solution,
users want to use XFS for these partitions.

Note that often, if the hanging grub is killed, grub-install can be
re-run and it does not hang, and works. I don't know why, but this makes
reproducing the problem annoying; the best way is to do a new d-i install
each time. :-/

Ancedotally, people seem to think the problem happens if the XFS
filesystem is not synced to disk when grub accesses it directly.

I've tried a few things. I tried adding 3 calls to sync before each call
to $grub_shell, but it still hangs. I remounted the filesystem ro and
then back to rw before calling grub-install, on the theory this might
make xfs put it in a consistent state, but no luck, it still hung.

It would be nice if this could be fixed, or even worked around better
than it currently is.

--=20
see shy jo

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