[Bug 1800722] Please test proposed package

[Brian Murray]

Hello Steve, or anyone else affected,

Accepted grub2-signed into cosmic-proposed. The package will build now
and be available at
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/grub2-signed/1.110.1 in a few
hours, and then in the -proposed repository.

Please help us by testing this new package.  See
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation on how
to enable and use -proposed.  Your feedback will aid us getting this
update out to other Ubuntu users.

If this package fixes the bug for you, please add a comment to this bug,
mentioning the version of the package you tested and change the tag from
verification-needed-cosmic to verification-done-cosmic. If it does not
fix the bug for you, please add a comment stating that, and change the
tag to verification-failed-cosmic. In either case, without details of
your testing we will not be able to proceed.

Further information regarding the verification process can be found at
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QATeam/PerformingSRUVerification .  Thank you in
advance for helping!

N.B. The updated package will be released to -updates after the bug(s)
fixed by this package have been verified and the package has been in
-proposed for a minimum of 7 days.

** Changed in: grub2 (Ubuntu Bionic)
       Status: New => Fix Committed

** Tags added: verification-needed-bionic

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1800722

Title:
  EFI booting + /boot on LVM == inaccessible boot menu

Status in grub2 package in Ubuntu:
  Fix Released
Status in grub2 source package in Bionic:
  Fix Committed
Status in grub2 source package in Cosmic:
  Fix Committed

Bug description:
  [Impact]
  This issue makes it impossible for UEFI users to access to boot menu and choose their kernel if /boot is installed on LVM.

  [Test case]
  1) Install Ubuntu on UEFI; put /boot on a LVM LV.
  2) Reboot after the install
  3) Verify that you will get a GRUB menu at boot.

  [Regression potential]
  Give particular attention to boot behavior on different disk setups: failure to show the menu on LVM or other disk setups when holding the SHIFT key, or showing the menu at every boot unnecessarily on other types of disk configurations: /boot on a physical partition, etc.

  ---

  Because EFI does not support instantaneous read of modifier keys (i.e.
  holding down shift at boot), the only way to reliably show a boot menu
  is by letting the system boot, interrupting the boot, and letting the
  menu be displayed because 'recordfail' has been set.

  If /boot/grub is on LVM, recordfail does not work, because grub
  doesn't have write support on LVM, so saveenv doesn't work.  Indeed,
  from the grub.cfg on such a system, the recordfail function is written
  as:

  function recordfail {
    set recordfail=1
    # GRUB lacks write support for lvm, so recordfail support is disabled.
  }

  The interaction of these two limitations means that systems with
  /boot/grub on LVM cannot reliably get a grub menu, ever.

  While I think that in the long term we should always put /boot/grub on
  the ESP (which means it will always be writable by grub), which is in
  fact what we did for Ubuntu Core, in the meantime I believe what we
  need to do here is always show the boot menu if we are booted under
  EFI and we have a non-writable grubenv.

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