Bug#809353: grub-pc: Wheezy's recently pushed grub package fails sometimes

Tue Dec 29 18:46:17 UTC 2015

Package: grub-pc
Version: 1.99-27+deb7u3
Severity: important

Dear Maintainer,

Grub has been working flawlessly on all 50 or so Debian systems that I
maintain. I have been running grub-install manually after kernel updates
to ensure all disks in the RAID array have a bootable disk. Yesterday and
today I upgraded grub with apt-get upgrade to apply the latest security
patches for Wheezy in the grub-pc_1.99-27+deb7u3_amd64.deb package.

This was the result:

Setting up grub-pc (1.99-27+deb7u3) ...
Configuring grub-pc
-------------------

The GRUB boot loader was previously installed to a disk that is no longer
present, or whose unique
identifier has changed for some reason. It is important to make sure that the
installed GRUB core
image stays in sync with GRUB modules and grub.cfg. Please check again to make
sure that GRUB is
written to the appropriate boot devices.

If you're unsure which drive is designated as boot drive by your BIOS, it is
often a good idea to
install GRUB to all of them.

Note: it is possible to install GRUB to partition boot records as well, and
some appropriate
partitions are offered here. However, this forces GRUB to use the blocklist
mechanism, which makes
it less reliable, and therefore is not recommended.

  1. /dev/sda (500107 MB; WDC_WD5003ABYX-01WERA1)  4. /dev/sdd (500107 MB;
WDC_WD5003ABYX-01WERA1)
  2. /dev/sdb (500107 MB; WDC_WD5003ABYX-01WERA1)  5. /dev/dm-0 (9999 MB;
ccs5a-root)
  3. /dev/sdc (500107 MB; WDC_WD5003ABYX-01WERA1)

(Enter the items you want to select, separated by spaces.)

GRUB install devices: 1 2
/usr/sbin/grub-probe: error: no such disk.
Auto-detection of a filesystem of /dev/mapper/ccs5a-root failed.
Try with --recheck.
If the problem persists please report this together with the output of
"/usr/sbin/grub-probe --device-map="/boot/grub/device.map" --target=fs -v
/boot/grub" to <bug-grub at gnu.org>
/usr/sbin/grub-probe: error: no such disk.
Auto-detection of a filesystem of /dev/mapper/ccs5a-root failed.
Try with --recheck.
If the problem persists please report this together with the output of
"/usr/sbin/grub-probe --device-map="/boot/grub/device.map" --target=fs -v
/boot/grub" to <bug-grub at gnu.org>
GRUB failed to install to the following devices:

/dev/sda /dev/sdb

Manually running grub-install also fails:

lfcjf at ccs5:~$ sudo grub-install --no-floppy /dev/sda
/usr/sbin/grub-probe: error: no such disk.
Auto-detection of a filesystem of /dev/mapper/ccs5a-root failed.
Try with --recheck.
If the problem persists please report this together with the output of
"/usr/sbin/grub-probe --device-map="/boot/grub/device.map" --target=fs -v
/boot/grub" to <bug-grub at gnu.org>

It seems grub-probe is getting confused by / on LVM. As I said, there
have been countless kernel upgrades where the previous version of grub
worked flawlessly.

The other system that failed was a kvm VM. If I have time next week,
I'll send a followup report on it. But it is not a production system
and so I'm not spending time on it today.

So far, I have not figured out a workaround. If I do, I'll followup.

-- Package-specific info:

*********************** BEGIN /proc/mounts
/dev/mapper/ccs5a-root / ext4 rw,relatime,errors=remount-ro,user_xattr,barrier=1,data=ordered 0 0
/dev/mapper/ccs5a-home /home ext4 rw,relatime,user_xattr,barrier=1,data=ordered 0 0
/dev/mapper/ccs5a-tmp /tmp ext2 rw,relatime,errors=continue 0 0
/dev/mapper/ccs5a-var /var ext4 rw,relatime,user_xattr,barrier=1,data=ordered 0 0
*********************** END /proc/mounts

*********************** BEGIN /boot/grub/device.map
(hd0)	/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-360022190b6c72a001a98e92c06da6e63
(hd1)	/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-360022190b6c72a001a98e92c06dad8da
(hd2)	/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-360022190b6c72a001a98e92c06db4316
(hd3)	/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-360022190b6c72a001a98e92d06dbad66
*********************** END /boot/grub/device.map

*********************** BEGIN /boot/grub/grub.cfg
#
# DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE
#
# It is automatically generated by grub-mkconfig using templates
# from /etc/grub.d and settings from /etc/default/grub
#

### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/00_header ###
if [ -s $prefix/grubenv ]; then
  load_env
fi
set default="0"
if [ "${prev_saved_entry}" ]; then
  set saved_entry="${prev_saved_entry}"
  save_env saved_entry
  set prev_saved_entry=
  save_env prev_saved_entry
  set boot_once=true
fi

function savedefault {
  if [ -z "${boot_once}" ]; then
    saved_entry="${chosen}"
    save_env saved_entry
  fi
}

function load_video {
  insmod vbe
  insmod vga
  insmod video_bochs
  insmod video_cirrus
}

set timeout=5
### END /etc/grub.d/00_header ###

### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme ###
set menu_color_normal=cyan/blue
set menu_color_highlight=white/blue
### END /etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme ###

### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/10_linux ###
menuentry 'Debian GNU/Linux, with Linux 3.2.0-4-amd64' --class debian --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os {
	load_video
	insmod gzio

	echo	'Loading Linux 3.2.0-4-amd64 ...'
	linux	/boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-4-amd64 root=/dev/mapper/ccs5a-root ro  quiet
	echo	'Loading initial ramdisk ...'
	initrd	/boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-4-amd64
}
menuentry 'Debian GNU/Linux, with Linux 3.2.0-4-amd64 (recovery mode)' --class debian --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os {
	load_video
	insmod gzio

	echo	'Loading Linux 3.2.0-4-amd64 ...'
	linux	/boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-4-amd64 root=/dev/mapper/ccs5a-root ro single 
	echo	'Loading initial ramdisk ...'
	initrd	/boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-4-amd64
}
### END /etc/grub.d/10_linux ###

### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/20_linux_xen ###
### END /etc/grub.d/20_linux_xen ###

### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/30_os-prober ###
### END /etc/grub.d/30_os-prober ###

### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/40_custom ###
# This file provides an easy way to add custom menu entries.  Simply type the
# menu entries you want to add after this comment.  Be careful not to change
# the 'exec tail' line above.
### END /etc/grub.d/40_custom ###

### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/41_custom ###
if [ -f  $prefix/custom.cfg ]; then
  source $prefix/custom.cfg;
fi
### END /etc/grub.d/41_custom ###
*********************** END /boot/grub/grub.cfg

*********************** BEGIN /proc/mdstat
Personalities : [raid1] 
md1 : active raid1 sdc2[0] sdd2[1]
      484788032 blocks super 1.2 [2/2] [UU]

md0 : active raid1 sda2[0] sdb2[1]
      484788032 blocks super 1.2 [2/2] [UU]

unused devices: <none>
*********************** END /proc/mdstat

*********************** BEGIN LVM

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 7.9
  APT prefers oldstable
  APT policy: (500, 'oldstable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 3.2.0-4-amd64 (SMP w/8 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 depends on:
ii  debconf [debconf-2.0]  1.5.49
ii  grub-common            1.99-27+deb7u3
ii  grub-pc-bin            1.99-27+deb7u3
ii  grub2-common           1.99-27+deb7u3
ii  ucf                    3.0025+nmu3

grub-pc recommends no packages.

grub-pc suggests no packages.

-- debconf information:
  grub-pc/kopt_extracted: false
  grub2/kfreebsd_cmdline:
  grub2/device_map_regenerated:
* grub-pc/install_devices: /dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD5003ABYX-01WERA1_WD-WMAYP6149069, /dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD5003ABYX-01WERA1_WD-WMAYP6148856
  grub-pc/postrm_purge_boot_grub: false
  grub-pc/install_devices_failed_upgrade: true
  grub-pc/disk_description:
* grub2/linux_cmdline:
  grub-pc/install_devices_empty: true
  grub2/kfreebsd_cmdline_default: quiet
  grub-pc/partition_description:
* grub-pc/install_devices_failed: true
* grub-pc/install_devices_disks_changed: /dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD5003ABYX-01WERA1_WD-WMAYP6149069, /dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD5003ABYX-01WERA1_WD-WMAYP6148856
* grub2/linux_cmdline_default: quiet
  grub-pc/chainload_from_menu.lst: true
  grub-pc/mixed_legacy_and_grub2: true