Re: Bug#681227: Can anyone reproduce #681227: installation-reports: grub-install tries to install to a nonsense string?!
Hi Matthew,
On 07/01/13 17:15, Matthew Vernon wrote:
>>> Jul 10 16:48:43 in-target: grub-common is already the newest version.
>>> Jul 10 16:48:43 in-target: 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove
>>> and 0 not upgraded.
>>> Jul 11 07:56:28 grub-installer: info: Installing grub on '/dev/sdb
>>> w33sxs34rfvbg789iokm·']'
> On 02/01/13 22:49, Steven Chamberlain wrote:
>> To the original submitter of the bug report: do you have a cat?
>
> No. The machine is my work desktop. I do have a QWERTY keyboard
> [...] I don't know how one might
> have gotten a middot out of it!
I've just learned that at least with my keyboard layout (gb), AltGr +
period will type the interpunct/middot, in Xorg or from a Linux
terminal. Those keys are more or less adjacent too.
> That said, I cannot eliminate the
> possibility that a cleaner was overzealous or similar, but it seems
> unlikely...?
I'm convinced this is the explanation. The installer was stuck at a
GRUB prompt for boot devices overnight; then at 07:56 (usually
'accurate', but might not be in the local timezone) GRUB proceeded
trying to install to:
w33 sxs 34rfvbg ... 789iokm ·']
This seems to fit with down/up sweeps across a QWERTY keyboard with
one's cleaning cloth, proceeding from the left to right (so I would even
guess that he/she is right-handed...).
[The split on an ergo keyboard would be between the ...vbg and 789...
sequences of keystrokes, and the closing square bracket is adjacent to
the carriage return key].
So I think this can be closed.
What to do with the workaround added by Wouter in grub-installer/1.84?
It did trigger a couple of regressions initially, but those are fixed
now in Git.
Silently ignoring a failure seems risky when we know that it should not
happen. (Someone may want to specify multiple targets, and if one of
them is typo'd it would be silently skipped in this case). So I think
it might be best to revert it?
Regards,
--
Steven Chamberlain
steven@pyro.eu.org
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