[Bug 464743] [NEW] error: sparse file not allowed

[Kevin Rogers]

Public bug reported:

Binary package hint: grub-pc

I have just upgraded my laptop to Ubuntu 9.10 and thought I would try to
switch to Grub2. I followed the instructions from
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2 and the installation did not
show any errors. The version of grub-pc that was installed was
1.97~beta4-1ubuntu3

When I rebooted, I got the legacy grub menu and chose the "Chainload"
option. The Grub 2 menu screen came up, with the choices I expected for
Ubuntu, Memory test and Windows.  When I select the "Ubuntu, Linux
2.6.31-14-generic" option, grub shows:

error: sparse files not allowed

Press any key to continue.

I tried the options for "Memory test" and "Windows", which worked just
fine. I followed the instructions at

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2#Command Line & Rescue Mode

specifically, I dropped to the command line mode and issued the
following commands:

set root=(hd0,3)
linux /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.31-14-generic root=/dev/sda3 ro
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.31-14-generic
boot

and the system booted... I then rebooted and chose to edit the "Ubuntu,
Linux 2.6.31-14-generic" grub 2 menu entry. Looking through all the
commands, I chose to remove the following lines:

recordfail=1
if [ -n ${have_grubenv} ]; then save_env recordfail; fi

when I removed these entries, the system booted just fine.

I have no idea why these two lines would cause a problem, but they
appear to. It is not clear if I would have had this problem if I had
performed a fresh install of 9.10, but I expect I would have  - which
would have landed less technical users with an unusable Ubuntu
installation!

** Affects: grub2 (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: New

-- 
error: sparse file not allowed
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/464743
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