Bug#548320: grub-rescue-pc: grub-rescue-floppy.img is too large for a standard floppy!

[Felix Zielcke]

severity 548320 important
thanks
Am Freitag, den 25.09.2009, 15:01 +0100 schrieb ael:
> Package: grub-rescue-pc
> Version: 1.97~beta3-1
> Severity: critical
> Justification: breaks the whole system
> 
> 
> $ ls -lh /usr/lib/grub-rescue/grub-rescue-floppy.img
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1.5M 2009-09-12 17:07 /usr/lib/grub-rescue/grub-rescue-floppy.img
> 
> A standard floppy is 1.44M, so grub-rescue-floppy.img is too large to fit.

That's the problem with 1000 or 1024 as unit for mega/kilo etc.
$ ls -l grub-rescue-floppy.img 
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1473256 12. Sep 15:46 grub-rescue-floppy.img

and that is (rounded) 1438,73 KiB (not KB)
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy_disk
A usual floppy disk has 1440 KiB

> If one nevertheless follows README.Debian and uses
> dd if=/usr/lib/grub-rescue/grub-rescue-floppy.img of=/dev/fd0 bs=32k
> 
> the resulting floppy fails to boot with the message:
> GRUB loadingRead Error

The image works fine in qemu
I think dd would even complain if the image size would be bigger then
your floppy.
Maybe your floppy is broken.
Compare `md5sum /dev/fd0' with
`md5sum /usr/lib/grub-rescue/grub-rescue-floppy.img'
You could try to create your own image with grub-mkrescue
It could be that your BIOS is just broken.
Try to update it.
And you could to try out if a GRUB Legacy boot disk works.

-- 
Felix Zielcke
Proud Debian Maintainer