Bug#345931: grub 0.97 doesn't work on several machines

[John Hughes]

Package: grub
Version: 0.97-2
Severity: critical
Justification: breaks the whole system

After installing grub 0.97 and doing a simple setup the system is 
unbootable.

The same behaviour was observed on an old Dell Dimension 4100 and a new 
Dell Optiplex GX270.

This may be the same as bug 341535, but it's happening on machines other 
than a IBM thinkpad and using ext2 filesystems noy xfs.

When the system random garbage gets printed on the screen.

Here's a typescript of the grub setup:

republic:~# grub

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> find /grub/menu.lst
 (hd0,0)
grub> root (hd0,0)
 Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
grub> setup (hd0)

 Checking if "/boot/grub/stage1" exists... no
 Checking if "/grub/stage1" exists... yes
 Checking if "/grub/stage2" exists... yes
 Checking if "/grub/e2fs_stage1_5" exists... yes
 Running "embed /grub/e2fs_stage1_5 (hd0)"...  16 sectors are embedded.
succeeded
 Running "install /grub/stage1 (hd0) (hd0)1+16 p (hd0,0)/grub/stage2 /grub/menu
..lst"... succeeded
Done.
grub> quit
republic:~# exit

Script done on Wed 04 Jan 2006 01:49:59 PM CET

-- System Information:
Debian Release: testing/unstable
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'stable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Shell:  /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.14-1-386
Locale: LANG=en_US, LC_CTYPE=en_US (charmap=ISO-8859-1)

Versions of packages grub depends on:
ii  libc6                         2.3.5-7    GNU C Library: Shared libraries an
ii  libncurses5                   5.5-1      Shared libraries for terminal hand

grub recommends no packages.

-- no debconf information