Bug#605567: grub-pc: does not boot with "unaligned pointer 0x...." when insmod-ing part_{msdos, gpt}

[Michael Prokop]

Package: grub-pc
Version: 1.98+20100804-8
Severity: normal


We (the Grml team) are building hybrid ISOs using grub2.
As soon as we use 'insmod part_msdos' in our grub.cfg booting fails
on several systems with "unaligned pointer 0x...." errors.

"Broken" configuration template:

  http://git.grml.org/?p=grml-live.git;a=blob;f=templates/boot/grub/grub.cfg;h=0f4d683cdcd89500086f835321be70b78443ee75;hb=987dd5d84c04ae6242ff9ee1da71cffcff92e0bb

This template works for us:

  http://git.grml.org/?p=grml-live.git;a=blob;f=templates/boot/grub/grub.cfg;h=da9c6b4066c1f3c1c9b4904f8fbd7d339503e2d9;hb=09667d4a67057707f959e2b667ad4d7da36fd2b3

(Notice that 'insmod part_gpt' was present as well though this
doesn't cause the problem on *my* system, I assume because there's
no gpt partition table in my test systems available.)

The issue can be reproduced with either real™ hardware or using
qemu/kvm via restricting memory to ~64MB (using '-m 64') but won't
be present if using something like 512MB memory in the virtual
machine.

We verified this issue with different versions of Grub, if you need
any further information please let me know.

regards,
-mika-