Bug#423217: grub-pc: Should not set itself up completely automatically on installation

[Frans Pop]

Package: grub-pc
Version: 1.95+20070507-1

I just installed grub-pc in a chroot, just because I wanted to try out 
grub-probe. I was somewhat horrified that it proceded to automatically 
install and configure itself.
Only after checking the postinst did I see that it had not actually 
written anything to the MBR (which makes it a bit less of a problem), but 
that is absolutely not clear to the user!

I also wonder how this works when the package is installed from 
debian-installer which AFAIK takes care of setting up grub itself.

I would strongly suggest to either not set up grub automatically or at 
least ask a debconf question whether the user really wants to set up 
grub. However, this should be done in such a way that the question does 
not get asked when grub-pc is installed by debian-installer.
Note that the current grub does not even have a postinst!


Also note the three errors while grub-probe is executed. These should be 
either avoided or suppressed.


$ sudo aptitude install grub-pc
[...]
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  grub-pc
0 packages upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
[...]
Unpacking grub-pc (from .../grub-pc_1.95+20070507-1_i386.deb) ...
Setting up grub-pc (1.95+20070507-1) ...
Updating /boot/grub/grub.cfg ...
grub-probe: error: Cannot open `/boot/grub/device.map'
grub-probe: error: Cannot open `/boot/grub/device.map'
grub-probe: error: Cannot open `/boot/grub/device.map'
Found linux image:  /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.18
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-2.6.18
Found linux image:  /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.18-3-686
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-2.6.18-3-686
Found linux image:  /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.18-4-486
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-2.6.18-4-486
Found linux image:  /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.18-4-686
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-2.6.18-4-686
Found linux image:  /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.20
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-2.6.20
Found linux image:  /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.20-1-686
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-2.6.20-1-686
done
Installation finished. No error reported.
This is the contents of the device map /boot/grub/device.map.
Check if this is correct or not. If any of the lines is incorrect,
fix it and re-run the script `grub-install'.

(fd0)   /dev/fd0
(hd0)   /dev/hda
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