Bug#302359: /sbin/update-grub: update-grub and/or installer generate wrong menue.lst - system becomes unbootable

[Johannes Wiedersich]

Filippo Giunchedi wrote:
>>The upgrade itself went fine, but when I tried to reboot into the new
>>kernel, I found that lilo still showed the old boot menu, providing just
>>the old kernels. I installed grub.
> 
> 
> this can be an unrelated issue to this bug and must be treated separately

I agree.

> 
> 
> I don't know if it is possible to guess the current root device used for booting
> (that would be useful though) and grub's guess is indeed wrong.
> 
> 
>>Unfortunately, I didn't remember the exact term for my raid; as the system became unbootable, the only solution was to reinstall from scratch. 
> 
> 
> have you tried to boot from a sarge's cd for example with the correct root=
> option?

I was certainly a bit too enthusiastic after the smooth and wonderful 
upgrade to sarge. I should have been more careful in retaining boot 
disks etc. Unfortunately, I was (and still am) rather unexperienced 
regarding lilo, the main reason for installing grub. I could have known 
that in /etc/lilo.conf the names of the root= option are given as

root=/dev/rd/c0d0p3
boot=/dev/rd/c0d0

But unfortunately I didn't.

> did you also had a look at sarge's release notes, especially
> http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/release-notes/ch-upgrading.en.html#s-newkernel

It would be nice, however, if grub were to automatically detect them 
correctly.

I would like to help further investigating how and what exactly went 
wrong (at the moment, I still have a backup of the server before the 
upgrade); as far as is possible on a production server.

Thanks for the help,

Johannes Wiedersich