Bug#319340: closed by Otavio Salvador <otavio@debian.org> (Added in 0.97-12)

[Raoul Borenius]

Otavio,

I did some tests today and can give you some more information:

Grub from Sarge does hang only if the BIOS-option 'Agent after boot' is
enabled. That means output after POST (BIOS of disk-controller and
network-cards etc.) ist still redirected to the serial port.

We use our servers in headless mode connected to a terminal server and
usually do a network-install with FAI. That's why we have the option
'Agent after boot' enabled.

Because of the fact that grub works very well with other mainboards
in headless mode I blamed the disk-controller in the first place. A test
today with with keyboard and monitor and disabled boot-agent did prove
that it's not the controllers fault.

I've also tried grub 0.97-5 and 0.97-13. I can't tell if they are still
confused by the above BIOS-option because unfortunately they do not boot
at all and give me:

 ----------------------------------------------------------


  Booting 'Debian GNU/Linux, kernel 2.6.8-3-686-smp'

root  (hd0,0)
 Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
kernel  /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.8-3-686-smp root=/dev/sda1 ro console=tty1 console=tt yS0,115200
   [Linux-bzImage, setup=0x1400, size=0x12ba08]
initrd  /boot/initrd.img-2.6.8-3-686-smp
   [Linux-initrd @ 0x37b4a000, 0x4a5000 bytes]
savedefault

Error 15: File not found

Press any key to continue...

 ----------------------------------------------------------


All grub installs (0.95+cvs20040624-17, 0.97-5 and 0.97-13) went like this

root at b5:~# dpkg -P grub
(Reading database ... 19142 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing grub ...
root at b5:~# dpkg -i grub_0.97-13_i386.deb 
Selecting previously deselected package grub.
(Reading database ... 19100 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking grub (from grub_0.97-13_i386.deb) ...
Setting up grub (0.97-13) ...
root at b5:~# mkdir -p /boot/grub ; cp /lib/grub/i386-pc/* /boot/grub
root at b5:~# sync
root at b5:~# grub --batch <<EOF
> root (hd0,0)
> setup (hd0)
> quit
> EOF
Probing devices to guess BIOS drives. This may take a long time.


    GNU GRUB  version 0.97  (640K lower / 3072K upper memory)

       [ Minimal BASH-like line editing is supported.   For
         the   first   word,  TAB  lists  possible  command
         completions.  Anywhere else TAB lists the possible
         completions of a device/filename. ]
grub> root (hd0,0)
 Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
grub> setup (hd0)
 Checking if "/boot/grub/stage1" exists... yes
 Checking if "/boot/grub/stage2" exists... yes
 Checking if "/boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5" exists... yes
 Running "embed /boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5 (hd0)"...  15 sectors are embedded.
succeeded
 Running "install /boot/grub/stage1 (hd0) (hd0)1+15 p (hd0,0)/boot/grub/stage2 /boot/grub/menu.lst"... succeeded
Done.
grub> quit
root at b5:~# cd /boot && rm vmlinuz vmlinuz.old initrd.img initrd.img.old
root at b5:~# update-grub -y
Searching for GRUB installation directory ... found: /boot/grub
Testing for an existing GRUB menu.list file ... found: /boot/grub/menu.lst
Searching for splash image ... none found, skipping ...
Found kernel: /boot/vmlinuz
Found kernel: /boot/vmlinuz.old
Found kernel: /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.8-3-686-smp
Found kernel: /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.27-2-386
Found kernel: /boot/memtest86+.bin
Updating /boot/grub/menu.lst ... done

root at b5:~# reboot


With 0.95+cvs20040624-17 grub bootet correctly after disabling
'Agent after boot' in the BIOS as explained above. With 0.97-5 and 0.97-13
I got the 'File not found'-error.


BTW: grub-install /dev/sda gives me:
"/dev/scsi/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/disc does not have any corresponding BIOS drive." That's the reason I'm using the grub-shell to install grub. We do have
some udev-rules on the servers that name the scsi-disks like devfs used to do.
That's to ease disk-management in case of failed disks.

There seems to be other people who have problems when using the grub-shell
(Bug #345931) to install. Well, looks like we have to wait for grub2...

Thanks for all your time!

Regards

 Raoul