[Bug 466462] [NEW] upgrade-from-grub-legacy proceeds even without a selected device

[Fail Fail Why Do I Have to Log in to File a Bug Report]

Public bug reported:

Binary package hint: grub2

While upgrade-from-grub-legacy does offer the user a choice of devices
in which to install Grub 2, it will happily pretend to upgrade Grub to
Grub 2 even if the users doesn't select a device!

For example, the initial screen for upgrade-from-grub-legacy might
include the following text:

GRUB install devices:
[ ] /dev/sda

<OK>

Tabbing immediately to <OK> or simply pressing "Enter" (that is, without
pressing the spacebar at the checkbox [ ] next to /dev/sda) allows the
script to proceed. But it doesn't pass any device names to the actual
Grub installer, which will output something like this:

Generating grub.cfg ...
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.31-14-generic
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-2.6.31-14-generic
Found memtest86+ image: /boot/memtest86+.bin
done

GRUB Legacy has been removed, but its configuration files have been preserved,
since this script cannot determine if they contain valuable information.  If
you would like to remove the configuration files as well, use the following
command:

  rm -f /boot/grub/menu.lst*

The upgrade-from-grub-legacy ends without any obvious error messages!
This is bad! Legacy Grub has not been successfully upgraded. I was
bitten by this bug. My fix was to download a copy of Super Grub Disk
since I don't have a copy of Karmic Koala at hand and I don't want to go
to the pain of downloading a 700MB ISO image just to fix a boot loader
problem!

For comparison, selecting a device from the example device list above
gives the following output:

Installation finished. No error reported.
This is the contents of the device map /boot/grub/device.map.
Check if this is correct or not. If any of the lines is incorrect,
fix it and re-run the script `grub-install'.

(hd0)	/dev/sda
Generating grub.cfg ...
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.31-14-generic
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-2.6.31-14-generic
Found memtest86+ image: /boot/memtest86+.bin
done

GRUB Legacy has been removed, but its configuration files have been preserved,
since this script cannot determine if they contain valuable information.  If
you would like to remove the configuration files as well, use the following
command:

  rm -f /boot/grub/menu.lst*

This is a serious problem. My suggested solution solution is to rewrite
the script to force the user to select at least one device and hope it's
the right one! Ideally the script should automagically select the device
for the user but of course something is better than nothing.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
Date: Sat Oct 31 18:42:07 2009
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
Package: grub-pc 1.97~beta4-1ubuntu3
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_PH.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/tcsh
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-14.48-generic
SourcePackage: grub2
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-14-generic x86_64
XsessionErrors:
 (gnome-settings-daemon:2732): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_propagate_error: assertion `src != NULL' failed
 (polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1:2777): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_once_init_leave: assertion `initialization_value != 0' failed
 (nautilus:2767): Eel-CRITICAL **: eel_preferences_get_boolean: assertion `preferences_is_initialized ()' failed
 (gnome-panel:2764): Gdk-WARNING **: /build/buildd/gtk+2.0-2.18.3/gdk/x11/gdkdrawable-x11.c:952 drawable is not a pixmap or window

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


** Tags: amd64 apport-bug

-- 
upgrade-from-grub-legacy proceeds even without a selected device
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/466462
You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu
Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu.

-- 
ubuntu-bugs mailing list
ubuntu-bugs at lists.ubuntu.com
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs