[Bug 776633] Re: grub-installer fails if root is on 27th disk

[nutznboltz]

I think grub-pc is also affected by similar device name length issues.
I have a Sun Fire X4500 where the firmware is so strange only two of the
48 disk drives are exposed to the BIOS as boot disks.  Ubuntu sees them
as /dev/sdy and /dev/sdag

I was able to shoe-horn an installation of 10.04.3 on by using the
server installation CD option "continue without without bootloader" (or
something to that effect) then booting from the CD in recovery mode and
from a shell prompt running "dpkg-reconfigure grub-pc" which presented
me with only /dev/sda through /dev/sdz as installation targets for
grub2.  The system has md RAID1 /dev/sdy1 and /dev/sdag1 but the
bootstrap is only on /dev/sdy at this point and not on /dev/sdag.

Eventually I hope to get around to find the code that limits grub-pc to
only /dev/sd[a-z]

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/776633

Title:
  grub-installer fails if root is on 27th disk

Status in “grub-installer” package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  Binary package hint: debian-installer

  I tried installing ubuntu-server 11.04 on a real system with 28 disks,
  where the disk I wanted to use as the root partition happened to be
  enumerated as /dev/sdaa (notice the two "a"s -- /dev/sda through
  /dev/sdaz are used, and then /dev/sdaa is the next disk).  The
  installer made it most of the way through, but the grub-installer step
  failed.

  I tried this in a virtual environment (for easier reproduction), and
  did:

      for i in $(seq -f'%02.0f' 28); do qemu-img create -f qcow2 d$i 4g;
  done

  to make 28 virtual drives (the qcow2 format means this uses minimal
  disk space), and then:

      kvm -net nic,model=virtio -net user -m 1024 -vga vmware -usbdevice tablet -smp 2 -vnc :1 \
      -drive file=/home/roland/ubuntu-11.04-server-amd64.iso,media=cdrom,if=ide,boot=on \
      -drive file=d01,if=virtio,format=qcow2 \
      -drive file=d02,if=virtio,format=qcow2 \
      -drive file=d03,if=virtio,format=qcow2 \
      -drive file=d04,if=virtio,format=qcow2 \
      -drive file=d05,if=virtio,format=qcow2 \
      -drive file=d06,if=virtio,format=qcow2 \
      -drive file=d07,if=virtio,format=qcow2 \
      -drive file=d08,if=virtio,format=qcow2 \
      -drive file=d09,if=virtio,format=qcow2 \
      -drive file=d10,if=virtio,format=qcow2 \
      -drive file=d11,if=virtio,format=qcow2 \
      -drive file=d12,if=virtio,format=qcow2 \
      -drive file=d13,if=virtio,format=qcow2 \
      -drive file=d14,if=virtio,format=qcow2 \
      -drive file=d15,if=virtio,format=qcow2 \
      -drive file=d16,if=virtio,format=qcow2 \
      -drive file=d17,if=virtio,format=qcow2 \
      -drive file=d18,if=virtio,format=qcow2 \
      -drive file=d19,if=virtio,format=qcow2 \
      -drive file=d20,if=virtio,format=qcow2 \
      -drive file=d21,if=virtio,format=qcow2 \
      -drive file=d22,if=virtio,format=qcow2 \
      -drive file=d23,if=virtio,format=qcow2 \
      -drive file=d24,if=virtio,format=qcow2 \
      -drive file=d25,if=virtio,format=qcow2 \
      -drive file=d26,if=virtio,format=qcow2 \
      -drive file=d27,if=virtio,format=qcow2 \
      -drive file=d28,if=virtio,format=qcow2

  (the first two lines can be tweaked for your ISO location and UI
  preferences).  In this VM, I chose to use whole disk on /dev/vdaa in
  the partitioner, and I got the same error with grub-installer failing.

  I'm currently poking around the grub-installer script to see what
  exactly is failing.  In /var/log/syslog (in the installer), I just
  see:

      WARNING **: Configuring 'grub-installer' failed with error code 1

  but no diagnostics from grub-installer that I can find.

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.04
  Package: debian-installer (not installed)
  Uname: Linux 2.6.39-999-generic x86_64
  Architecture: amd64
  Date: Tue May  3 11:26:53 2011
  EcryptfsInUse: Yes
  InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" - Alpha amd64 (20101206)
  MachineType: LENOVO 2901CTO
  MemoryUsage:
   total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
   Mem:       7987000    7830544     156456          0     290636    5617776
   -/+ buffers/cache:    1922132    6064868
   Swap:      1738748        620    1738128
  ProcEnviron:
   LANGUAGE=en_US:en
   PATH=(custom, user)
   LANG=en_US.UTF-8
   SHELL=/bin/bash
  ProcKernelCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.39-999-generic root=UUID=ab1e5491-e40c-4113-bf20-22ecb604999a ro drm.debug=0xe
  SourcePackage: debian-installer
  UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to natty on 2011-03-24 (39 days ago)
  dmi.bios.date: 10/27/2010
  dmi.bios.vendor: LENOVO
  dmi.bios.version: 6UET61WW (1.41 )
  dmi.board.name: 2901CTO
  dmi.board.vendor: LENOVO
  dmi.board.version: Not Available
  dmi.chassis.asset.tag: No Asset Information
  dmi.chassis.type: 10
  dmi.chassis.vendor: LENOVO
  dmi.chassis.version: Not Available
  dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnLENOVO:bvr6UET61WW(1.41):bd10/27/2010:svnLENOVO:pn2901CTO:pvrThinkPadT410s:rvnLENOVO:rn2901CTO:rvrNotAvailable:cvnLENOVO:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
  dmi.product.name: 2901CTO
  dmi.product.version: ThinkPad T410s
  dmi.sys.vendor: LENOVO

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