Bug#705636: grub-pc-bin: "/usr/sbin/grub-bios-setup: Not found" when using grub-install --target=i386-pc

[Daniel Kahn Gillmor]

Package: grub-pc-bin
Version: 2.00-13
Severity: normal

I'm running grub-efi-amd64 on this host ("alice"); but i want to be
able to install and work with the grub-pc bootloader as well, since i
use alice to prepare boot media for other machines.

So i have grub-pc-bin installed, alongside 

I think i ought to be able to prepare a bootable non-EFI USB stick
(/dev/sdX) with something like:

 parted /dev/sdX mktable msdos
 parted /dev/sdX mkpart primary fat32 1MiB 32MiB
 mkfs -t vfat /dev/sdX1
 mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt
 grub-install --target=i386-pc --root-directory=/mnt /dev/sdX

But that last step yields:

/usr/sbin/grub-bios-setup: Not found.

It looks like i have to add
--grub-setup=/usr/lib/grub/i386-pc/grub-bios-setup to the last command
to make it work properly.

Alternately, i can install grub-pc, but that rips out grub-efi,
potentially damaging the bootloader of alice itself.

grub-install ought to be able to figure out the location of
grub-bios-setup, if it is not in the $PATH, since it already knows the
--target.  and that /usr/lib/grub/$TARGET/ is a plausible place for
this binary to exist.

Otherwise, silly admins like me will be tempted to install grub-pc for
/usr/sbin/grub-bios-setup (without realizing it's just a symlink to a
file they already have), and then have to deal with juggling the
active bootloader, which is a little sketchy.

           --dkg

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 7.0
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing'), (200, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 3.8-trunk-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages grub-pc-bin depends on:
ii  grub-common         2.00-13
ii  libc6               2.13-38
ii  libdevmapper1.02.1  2:1.02.74-7

grub-pc-bin recommends no packages.

Versions of packages grub-pc-bin suggests:
pn  desktop-base  <none>

-- debconf-show failed