Bug#637768: grub-common: grub-probe doesn't follow symlinks

[Ove Kaaven]

Package: grub-common
Version: 1.99-11
Severity: important

I have a multibooted system with two Linux root partitions (one for i386
and one for amd64) and have been sharing /boot between them through
symlinking. That is, on the 64-bit partition, I mount the 32-bit
partition on /deb32 and symlink to it:

merlin:~# ls -l /boot
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 11  6 jan.   2009 /boot -> /deb32/boot

So, I do not have a separate /boot partition. Rather, in this case,
/boot is a subdirectory of another partition than the current root
partition. It appears that "grub-probe -t device /boot" doesn't notice
that /boot is a symlink into another partition, so it just returns
the current root partition, which doesn't work. This means that
installing kernels on my 64-bit partition results in an unbootable
system... and there's not much docs on how to override it when
grub-probe gets it wrong.

(By studying the shell scripts, I think I've figured out a way to
override it, but I'm not supposed to have to, so...)

-- System Information:
Debian Release: wheezy/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (900, 'testing'), (800, 'unstable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 3.0.0-1-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=nb_NO.utf8, LC_CTYPE=nb_NO.utf8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages grub-common depends on:
ii  gettext-base            0.18.1.1-3       GNU Internationalization utilities
ii  libc6                   2.13-10          Embedded GNU C Library: Shared lib
ii  libdevmapper1.02.1      2:1.02.63-3.1    The Linux Kernel Device Mapper use
ii  libfreetype6            2.4.4-2          FreeType 2 font engine, shared lib
ii  libfuse2                2.8.5-4          Filesystem in Userspace (library)
ii  zlib1g                  1:1.2.3.4.dfsg-3 compression library - runtime

Versions of packages grub-common recommends:
ii  os-prober                     1.47       utility to detect other OSes on a 

Versions of packages grub-common suggests:
ii  desktop-base                  6.0.6      common files for the Debian Deskto
pn  grub-emu                      <none>     (no description available)
pn  multiboot-doc                 <none>     (no description available)
pn  xorriso                       <none>     (no description available)

-- Configuration Files:
/etc/grub.d/10_linux changed [not included]

-- no debconf information