Bug#645210: debian-installer: grub2 setup for a new drive misses a Windows boot choice from the original drive

[Ilguiz Latypov <ilatypov@rim.com>]

Package: debian-installer
Version: i386 netinst as of October 5, 2011
Severity: important
Tags: d-i

Dear Maintainer,

   * What led up to the situation?

   I decided to install Debian on a new disk drive and preserve the Windows
installation on the original drive.

   I downloaded the latest i386 netinst ISO image of Debian Installer, burned
it on a DVD and booted off it.

   * What exactly did you do (or not do) that was effective (or ineffective)?

   I chose the new drive for simple partitioning.  I chose to install Grub2 in
MBR of the original drive.

   * What was the outcome of this action?

   I did not see Windows as a boot option.  (This took a worse turn when the
udev in the initial RAM disk image loaded a kernel module "radeon" for my video
card ATI Radeon HD 3600, apparently in an attempt to provide a frame buffer for
the text mode, and the video card showed garbage.  It took a while to add an
option "blacklist=radeon" to the kernel command line at boot time and add a
line "blacklist radeon" to a file in /etc/modprobe.d).

   * What outcome did you expect instead?

   I expected to see a boot option to start from a partition in the original
disk drive.


Here is how I worked around the issue.

   I booted off the netinst DVD into a rescue mode.  Ran update-grub and it did
not show the Windows partition of the original drive.  Inspected the output of
os-prober.  I believe it did not show Windows either.  I then ran fdisk -l and
I think I saw my original disk drive with its Windows partition.  After
inspecting os-prober I figured it depended on the list of mounted partitions.
I added the Windows partition to /etc/fstab,

        /dev/sda1       /c      ntfs    auto    0       0

   Unfortunately, "mount /c" failed because the target root partition where I
chrooted did not have modules of the rescue kernel.  I cannot remember how I
succeeded in mounting the partition before re-running update-grub.  Perhaps, I
returned or rebooted to the dialogs of the rescue mode of Debian Installer and
chose to re-configure Grub2 in the dialogs.

  I could see my Windows partition of the original drive in the bootloader's
list at boot time.  I could successfully start Windows.

Here is my opinion on a possible root cause.

  It seems that Debian Installer does not attempt to mount partitions on drives
other than the one selected for partitioning.



-- System Information:
Debian Release: wheezy/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 3.0.0-1-686-pae (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_CA.utf8, LC_CTYPE=en_CA.utf8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash