Bug#601974: regression: grub-probe can not find /dev/xvda1 (block device inside XEN)

[Csillag Kristof]

Package: grub-common
Version: 1.98+20100804-7
Severity: important

Hi, I am running a bunch of XEN virtual domains,
in which I have grub installed.
(I use pygrub to boot them from dom0, but that's irrelevant now.)

In the xen configuration, I have different block devices assigned for 
the partitions, like this:

disk = [ 
        'phy:safe2/intranet,hda1,w',
        'phy:safe2/intranet_swap,hda2,w',
]

So, in the virtual domain, the block devices appear like this;

real /dev/safe2/intranet       -> virtual /dev/xvda1
real /dev/safe2/intranet_swap  -> virtual /dev/xvda2 

Note there is no /dev/xvda device as such.

This works all right for normal disk IO.

In the grub config, I have

	root		(hd0)
	kernel 	....	root=/dev/xvda1

With grub-common from stable, I can make grub work
by manually creating a (fake) xvda device: mknod /dev/xvda b 202 0

devices.map looks like this:

	(hd0)	/dev/xvda


after this, update-grub works properly.

Now if I upgrade to grub-common from unstable, this starts to fail.
Whatever I do, it won't work.

How do I fix that?

Thank you for your help:

    Kristof Csillag


-- System Information:
Debian Release: 5.0.6
  APT prefers stable
  APT policy: (990, 'stable'), (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.32-5-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.ISO-8859-15, LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO-8859-15 (charmap=UTF-8) (ignored: LC_ALL set to hu_HU.UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

Versions of packages grub-common depends on:
ii  base-files             5lenny7           Debian base system miscellaneous f
ii  dpkg                   1.14.29+b1        Debian package management system
ii  gettext-base           0.17-4            GNU Internationalization utilities
ii  install-info           4.13a.dfsg.1-6    Manage installed documentation in 
ii  libc6                  2.11.2-6          Embedded GNU C Library: Shared lib
ii  libdevmapper1.02.1     2:1.02.48-3       The Linux Kernel Device Mapper use
ii  libfreetype6           2.3.7-2+lenny4    FreeType 2 font engine, shared lib
ii  zlib1g                 1:1.2.3.3.dfsg-12 compression library - runtime

Versions of packages grub-common recommends:
pn  os-prober                     <none>     (no description available)

Versions of packages grub-common suggests:
pn  grub-emu                      <none>     (no description available)
pn  multiboot-doc                 <none>     (no description available)
pn  xorriso                       <none>     (no description available)

-- no debconf information