Bug#597538: more notes on #597538

[Daniel Kahn Gillmor]

On 01/16/2011 12:50 AM, Daniel Kahn Gillmor wrote:
> (if i remove the patch, and re-run "grub-install /dev/hda" with the
> corrected device.map, grub fails to boot again, and needs the earlier
> workaround)


On irc.freenode.org#grub, phcoder said:

07:42 < phcoder> dkg: I see where your trouble comes from. Try
                 launching grub-install with no argument


So i unapplied my patch, and ran "grub-install" (no additional
arguments).  grub-mkimage was invoked with --prefix=/, but it now boots
properly.  Presumably some other part of the configuration was fixed by
omitting that argument.

I then replaced device.map with the original, auto-generated device.map,
and tried "grub-install" and "update-grub" again, and it still works.  yay!

So the problem seems to be that "grub-install /dev/hda" fails on this
machine, but "grub-install" works (at least with version 1.99~20110112-1).

the man page for grub-install suggests that it's acceptable to supply a
device name as an argument:

NAME
       grub-install - install GRUB to a device

SYNOPSIS
       grub-install [OPTION] [install_device]


Though i note that install_device is *not* in brackets (i.e. is not
optional) on the man page from an i386 installation of grub-common
1.98+20100804-11.

So i'm not sure what the right way to address this is.  As powerpc users
start to migrate to grub, they'll probably carry over their habits for
invoking grub-install with an argument (as i did).  Can that case be
handled correctly?

Thanks for the advice.  I'm now happily using grub on this machine, and
plan to migrate the other powerpc systems that i maintain to grub as the
bootloader.

Regards,

	--dkg

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