Bug#1054644: xfsprogs-udeb: causes D-I to fail, reporting errors about missing partition devices

[Philip Hands]

Philip Hands <phil at hands.com> writes:

> Anthony Iliopoulos <ailiop at suse.com> writes:
> ...
>> Yeap it is due to nrext64, I've submitted a patch to grub (should have
>> cc'ed linux-xfs..)
>>
>> https://lore.kernel.org/grub-devel/20231026095339.31802-1-ailiop@suse.com/
>
> That certainly seems to fix this bug.

... but sadly that may not be the end of the story.

I've persuaded D-I to use the patched grub version, and when testing it,
it now gets past the previous failure to complete the install, but then
fails to boot after the first reboot, as seen here:

  https://openqa.debian.net/tests/200160#step/_console_wait_login/7

where it drops to the 'grub rescue>' prompt, complaining that:

  error: file `/boot/grub/i386-pc/normal.mod' not found.

if one types `ls (hd0,msdos1)/boot/grub/i386-pc` at that rescue prompt,
it lists the files up to msdospart.mod and then says:

  error: invalid XFS directory entry.

(BTW the directory seemed fine before the reboot, because I listed it)

This makes me wonder: Could it be that the code within the grub
components that get installed onto the disk also needs to be patched to
understand the newer directory structure, and without that it is unable
to read the whole directory, and thus fails to boot it?

Cheers, Phil.

P.S. If you want to try this for yourself, the test image used (that pulls in
the patched grub) is to be found here:

https://salsa.debian.org/philh/grub2/-/jobs/4865564/artifacts/file/debian/output/debian-202306XX+ABI~6.5.0~3+salsaci+20231029+21-amd64-gtkmini.iso

and adding `partman/default_filesystem=xfs` on the kernel command line
before booting into D-I will get it to default to using XFS.
-- 
Philip Hands -- https://hands.com/~phil
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