[Bug 556167] Re: vmbuilder uses parted to create disk images, which leads to broken sector counts (cannot use grub2 on disk images created by vmbuilder/parted)

[Phillip Susi]

The bios geometry just shouldn't matter.  Sure, it is odd that it uses a
different geometry for an image file than a disk, but whether the
nonsensical geometry specifies 63 or 32 or 3 sectors per track,
partitions are supposed to have a 1mb alignment these days.  This is
what you get if you specify the start position as 0%, so it doesn't make
sense for the free space check to advertise a lower position as a valid
start, especially when you get a warning exception when you try to use
it, which I guess is ignored by vmbuilder.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/556167

Title:
  vmbuilder uses parted to create disk images, which leads to broken
  sector counts (cannot use grub2 on disk images created by
  vmbuilder/parted)

Status in “parted” package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed
Status in “vm-builder” package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  parted uses a fixed sector count of "32" when writing partitions to a
  non-block device.  (See init_file() via linux_new() in
  libparted/arch/linux.c)  As a result, the track size of disks created
  with vmbuilder is 32 sectors, not the generally expected 63 sectors
  (used with LBA mode).  This means that the "embedding region" between
  the end of the MBR and the start of partition 1 is half the "normal"
  size, and grub2 will not install.

  /usr/sbin/grub-setup: warn: Your embedding area is unusually small.
  core.img won't fit in it..

  Fastest solution I see is to use an environment override as already
  done in init_file() for sector size.  Perhaps PARTED_SECTORS?  And
  then set this to 63 when calling parted from vm-builder.

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