Bug#497791: Bug #497791, confirmation

[Adolf Winterer]

Hi,

I can confirm the problem. This is the sequence that leads to the problem:

* Install Lenny 5.0.2
This will automatically use grub2, the system is perfectly bootable.

* Add Squeeze to the sources.list
After updating the package list the packages grub-common and grub-pc are shown 
as updateable.

* Update grub-common and grub-pc
During the update a requestor shows up in the terminal window of Synaptic 
asking for the device to install grub into. Here it is /dev/sda3. The 
requestor pops up again, this time I only hit the enter key as there is only 
one target to install to. The installation process continues then with no 
apparent error.

* Reboot the system
Now the system cannot boot any longer. Instead of booting grub 
displays "error: unknown command linux".

* Use the grub editor at startup
Here I replace the line containing the literals
	search --fs-uuid
with
	insmod "linux"
and the system successfully boots up. But this is only a temporary workaround 
to get into the system again.

* Permanent solution
Something is wrong with using UUIDs in connection with booting, because 
uncommenting the according line in /etc/defaults/grub:
GRUB_DISABLE_LINUX_UUID=true
and running update-grub changes the file /boot/grub/grub.cfg. The line 
with "search ... --fsuid ..." is still present, but the line with "linux ..." 
has changed to reflect /dev/sda3 as boot device.

Therefore the presence of the line containing "search ..." or the length of 
the line do not seem to be a problem, but using the UUID is.

Some additional informations on the setup:
Hardware is a MacBook Pro, with rEFIt 0.13 as boot manager for dual boot. 
Partitions are:
EFI Partition is /dev/sda1
Mac OS X is in /dev/sda2
/root is in /dev/sda3 (grub is installed into this partition)
/home is in /dev/sda4

Regards,
Adolf Winterer