Re: Problems installing grub during buster d-i of a machine with only NVMe storage

[Andy Smith <andy@strugglers.net>]

On Sat, Nov 21, 2020 at 01:35:48AM +0000, Andy Smith wrote:
> Nov 21 01:02:25 grub-installer: info: Running chroot /target grub-install  --force-extra-removable --force "dummy"
> Nov 21 01:02:25 grub-installer: Installing for x86_64-efi platform.
> Nov 21 01:02:25 grub-installer: grub-install: warning: vars_get_variable: open(/sys/firmware/efi/vars/blk0-47c7b225-c42a-11d2-8e57-00a0c969723b/raw_var, O_RDONLY) failed: No such file or directory.

I think the problem is in libefiboot and is fixed here:

    https://github.com/rhboot/efivar/pull/139

It being the parsing of /sys/dev/block links - it seems to choke on
/sys/dev/block/259:1 ->
../../devices/virtual/nvme-subsystem/nvme-subsys0/nvme0n1 for me.

libefiboot1 37-6 from sid has this fix; 37-2 from buster and 37-5
from bullseye do not.

After installing the 37-6 .deb:

# grub-install /dev/nvme0n1
Installing for x86_64-efi platform.
Installation finished. No error reported.

What is the correct procedure for getting this fix backported so
that the next buster point release can be properly installed on such
hardware?

Cheers,
Andy