Bug#423022: Bug#422851: "grub-probe -t partmap" doesn't work with software RAID

[Sam Morris]

clone 423022 -1
retitle -1 Errors that cause the user to enter rescue mode are not displayed
thanks

On Sat, 2007-05-19 at 14:10 +0100, Sam Morris wrote:
> 'grub-mkimage --output=/boot/grub/core.img ext2 pc raid _chain' dumps me
> to the rescue console.
> 
> I wonder if I am hitting the rescue console because of the "out of disk"
> error that I see when inserting the 'raid' module by hand? The
> partitions in my raid array are 300 GiB, which is larger than the 128
> GiB limit imposed by LBA-28 addressing.

I patched kern/disk.c to return GRUB_ERR_NONE instead of throwing the
'out of disk' error and, now I can boot up perfectly! So it appears this
is indeed the problem.

> If this is the case then I guess the error is really my fault and I
> should fix it by creating a separate partition at the start of the disk
> for /boot. However, the code that brings me to the rescue console
> doesn't actually print any errors, it just dumps me there, so I may just
> be barking up the wrong tree. :)

Ideally grub would display the the error message that causes the user to
be thrown into the rescue console.

In addition, it would be nice if the 'out of disk' error could be
deferred until grub actually tries to read a block that is out of range,
as grub-legacy does (even through it doesn't 'see' the RAID partition as
such, I can still boot from it without complaint). But this is less
important, as I should really have a working system to begin with. I
won't clone a separate bug for this unless you think it's worthwhile.

I wonder if d-i warns the user that they may be creating an unbootable
system if the partition that contains /boot does not exist wholly within
the first 7.8 GiB/128 GiB/128 PiB (depending on the addressing mode in
use) of the disk? :)

-- 
Sam Morris
http://robots.org.uk/

PGP key id 1024D/5EA01078
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