Bug#496820: grub-pc in current installer snapshot fails with separate boot partition

[Eric Anderson]

Package: grub-pc
Version: 1.96+20080724-8
Severity: important


grub-pc fails to install as it is unable to read the file /boot/grub/core.img
when used with a separate /boot partition a machine with a > 2TB disk.

The problem appears to be that grub-setup is looking for the file 
/boot/grub/core.img, but since the filesystem is already /boot, it is unable 
to find it.

A workaround is to run ln -s . /target/boot/boot after the installer fails, 
or ln -s . /boot/boot in the chroot environment the grub-install script
runs in, but this is almost assuredly the wrong solution so I'm not 
making a patch to do this.

The install fails with either lvm or normal partitions, the machine as configured 
right now has lvm on it since that's what we wanted, but we tried both.
The underlying disk happens to be 4x750GB in hardware R5 mode, so the 
disk size seen by the os is ~2.1TB.

The test used the current lenny testing installer snapshot (2008-08-25 jigdo, 
67b34eb6c7c30b330df9d19d1686c03105ea3746  debian-testing-amd64-CD-1.iso)
The installer is properly choosing grub-pc for use on the large disk.

We have a spare machine with the same hardware configuration, so can
try an updated version of the packages to make sure they work.

-- Package-specific info:

*********************** BEGIN /proc/mounts
/dev/mapper/martenot-root / ext3 rw,noatime,errors=remount-ro,data=ordered 0 0
/dev/cciss/c0d0p1 /boot ext3 rw,noatime,errors=continue,data=ordered 0 0
/dev/mapper/martenot-home /home xfs rw,noatime,attr2,nobarrier,noquota 0 0
/dev/mapper/martenot-tmp /tmp xfs rw,noatime,attr2,nobarrier,noquota 0 0
/dev/mapper/martenot-var /var xfs rw,noatime,attr2,nobarrier,noquota 0 0
*********************** END /proc/mounts

*********************** BEGIN /boot/grub/device.map
(hd0)	/dev/cciss/c0d0
*********************** END /boot/grub/device.map

*********************** BEGIN /boot/grub/grub.cfg
#
# DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE
#
# It is automatically generated by /usr/sbin/update-grub using templates
# from /etc/grub.d and settings from /etc/default/grub
#

### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/00_header ###
set default=0
set timeout=5
insmod lvm
set root=(martenot-root)
search --fs-uuid --set 02f4ef63-c6b1-4507-b872-ee95730d004d
if font /usr/share/grub/ascii.pff ; then
  set gfxmode=640x480
  insmod gfxterm
  insmod vbe
  terminal gfxterm
fi
### END /etc/grub.d/00_header ###

### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme ###
set menu_color_normal=cyan/blue
set menu_color_highlight=white/blue
### END /etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme ###

### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/10_hurd ###
### END /etc/grub.d/10_hurd ###

### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/10_linux ###
set root=(hd0,1)
search --fs-uuid --set 928fe409-4d19-48cf-b78a-de1b8146d891
menuentry "Debian GNU/Linux, linux 2.6.25-2-amd64" {
	linux	/vmlinuz-2.6.25-2-amd64 root=/dev/mapper/martenot-root ro  
	initrd	/initrd.img-2.6.25-2-amd64
}
menuentry "Debian GNU/Linux, linux 2.6.25-2-amd64 (single-user mode)" {
	linux	/vmlinuz-2.6.25-2-amd64 root=/dev/mapper/martenot-root ro single 
	initrd	/initrd.img-2.6.25-2-amd64
}
### END /etc/grub.d/10_linux ###

### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/30_os-prober ###
### END /etc/grub.d/30_os-prober ###

### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/40_custom ###
# This file is an example on how to add custom entries
### END /etc/grub.d/40_custom ###
*********************** END /boot/grub/grub.cfg

-- System Information:
Debian Release: lenny/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.25-2-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

Versions of packages grub-pc depends on:
ii  debconf [debconf-2.0]    1.5.22          Debian configuration management sy
ii  grub-common              1.96+20080724-8 GRand Unified Bootloader, version 
ii  libc6                    2.7-13          GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii  liblzo2-2                2.03-1          data compression library
ii  libncurses5              5.6+20080804-1  shared libraries for terminal hand

grub-pc recommends no packages.

Versions of packages grub-pc suggests:
pn  desktop-base                  <none>     (no description available)
pn  os-prober                     <none>     (no description available)

-- debconf information:
  grub-pc/linux_cmdline: fillme
  grub-pc/chainload_from_menu.lst: true