Bug#712907: grub-installer: No longer installs automatically on a normal machine with one hard drive
On 15/09/14 08:36, Petter Reinholdtsen wrote:
> [Samuel Thibault]
>> I have attached the syslog, "interestingly":
>>
>> Aug 26 00:10:17 grub-installer: info: Installing grub on ''
>
> Yes, I suspect that is a typo in the script somewhere, failing to set
> the default. partman succeed in picking a good default, perhaps
> grub-installer can use the same logic?
FWIW I've been looking into this issue already in the past few days.
At this point I'd say Petter's patch shouldn't be necessary, because the
intent was for the 'list' dialog to have an entry pre-selected (or not
show that dialog at all). That only works sometimes (e.g. PXE), but in
other cases (including CD-ROM) it appears grub-installer correctly
guessed the boot device (based on filesystem containing /boot) and just
didn't pre-select it in the dialog. That causes the regression in auto
preseed installs.
I suggest to actually remove this dialog now:
> Install the GRUB boot loader to the master boot record?
> <Go Back> <Yes> <No>
because it doesn't make it clear which device we're actually installing
to. If our guess was wrong, we want to give the user a chance to
correct it. The new dialog can serve the same purpose and is more
informative:
> Device for boot loader installation:
> [ ] Enter device manually
> [o] /dev/sda (ata-QEMU_HARDDISK_QM00001)
> <Go Back>
How do people feel about me making such a change? I think it will make
the real bug (that we sometimes don't pre-select an option in that
dialog despite having a good guess) easier for everyone to see.
Regards,
--
Steven Chamberlain
steven@pyro.eu.org
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