Bug#839894: installation-report: Jessie installer fails to install GRUB on a large JBOD system

["Jonathan Quick" <jon@hartrao.ac.za>]

Hi Len

On Thu, October 6, 2016 8:24 pm, Lennart Sorensen wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 06, 2016 at 07:45:36AM +0000, Jonathan Quick wrote:
>> Whilst installing from a (Jessie) 8.6 netboot installer the GRUB
>> installation step failed, leaving the system unbootable.
>
> Sounds like the regex for matching valid disks in the installer handling
> grub install isn't expecting 2 letter names, which is certainly an unusual
> case, and if your system had put the target disk first rather than last,
> you wouldn't have had a problem either.  Of course if wheezy didn't see
> the other disks that would have solved the problem for it.
>
> Probably this part of grub-installer is the problem:
>
>     /dev/[hsv]d[a-z0-9]|/dev/xvd[a-z]|/dev/cciss/c[0-9]d[0-9]*|/dev/ida/c[0-9]d[0-9]*|/dev/rs/c[0-9]d[0-9]*|/dev/mmcblk[0-9]|/dev/nvme[0-9]*n[0-9]*|/dev/ad[0-9]*|/dev/da[0-9]*)
>
>
> /dev/[hsv]d[a-z0-9] will match /dev/sda through /dev/sdz, but NOT /dev/sdak.
>
> If it added /dev/sd[a-z][a-z] as well, it should work for you.
>
> So maybe:
>     /dev/[hsv]d[a-z0-9]|/dev/sd[a-z][a-z]|/dev/xvd[a-z]|/dev/cciss/c[0-9]d[0-9]*|/dev/ida/c[0-9]d[0-9]*|/dev/rs/c[0-9]d[0-9]*|/dev/mmcblk[0-9]|/dev/nvme[0-9]*n[0-9]*|/dev/ad[0-9]*|/dev/da[0-9]*)
>
> Not sure if other places need fixing too.

Having edited grub-installer in-place during the install process, I can
confirm that the above change is sufficient to fix the problem and the
installation then completes normally.

Thanks
  Jon