Bug#696877: installation-reports: Wheezy DI-b4-amd64-netboot-mini.iso from an usb stick fails trying to install grub

[Steven Chamberlain <steven@pyro.eu.org>]

Thanks Paul,

On 24/01/13 12:22, Paul Bryan Roberts wrote:
> # mount | grep cdrom

Ah of course, this is netboot...

> # list-devices cd
> /dev/sr0
> # list-devices maybe-usb-floppy
> # list-devices usb-partition
> /dev/sda4

What exactly is sda4;  is that where the mini.iso files are?

Is it formatted as vfat?


> After the original installation, /boot/grub/device.map read:
> (hd0)   /dev/disk/by-id  /usb-BUFFALO_ClipDrive_A3200510210000751-0:0

As a result, default_bootdev gets set to this.

GRUB will install there unless either:

* the device is mounted on /cdrom
* the device is mounted on /hd-media
* the install media was detected as hybrid iso9660 on USB
* the device has no partition, and yet it isn't a whole-drive filesystem
recognised by grub-probe


We need some novel way to detect that the installer is running from the
USB stick, but this isn't obvious from /proc/mounts or /proc/cmdline.

I suspect that if /dev/sda4 contained a directory ".disk/" containing an
empty file named "info", that might result in it being mounted on
/cdrom;  then grub-installer would decide know not to install there.

Regards,
-- 
Steven Chamberlain
steven@pyro.eu.org