Bug#456578: debian-installer: after first reboot, grub says: "unknown filesystem type" and then hangs

["Patrick Zanon" <patrick.zanon@gmail.com>]

Dear Drew Kay,

thanks for the fast answer.

> Few things spring to mind.
>
> 1) I think your root (hd0,0) is pointing to hda1 and not hda2. 0x7 is
> the NTFS partition type and GRUB has no idea how to handle NTFS. Try
> setting root to (hd0,1)

yes, you are right

> 2) Given you have a separate boot partition, the kernel (vmlinuz)
> entry needs to be relative to  '/boot' and not to '/'. GRUB doesn't
> care how the partitions are later mounted in linux, it just works with
> the file system in that partition.
>
> 3) Check your root entry on the kernel line. That option tells the
> kernel which device contains the root filesystem. hda1 is the boot
> filesystem, not root.
>
> Try this and see what happens:
>
> ---
> root (hd0,1)
> kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.18-5-k7 root=/dev/sda1 ro
> initrd /initrd.img-2.6.18-5-k7
> ---

I manually added the following lines at the end of the menu.lst in
/boot/grub/ directory during a rescue sessione in which I started a
shell:

title Debian by patrick
root (hd0,1)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.18-5-k7 root=/dev/sda1 ro single
initrd /initrd.img-2.6.18-5-k7
savedefault

this workaround let me to start the system, but the installation
process does not continue, and I have to mount manually the other
partitions (including the swap one) since the /etc/fstab file is
empty.

Patrick