Re: How to troubleshoot when stuck at "GRUB loading."?

2013/9/16 Anders Ingemann <anders@ingemann.de>

Hey guys

I posted to help-grub@gnu.org, asking for help to figure out why my
VirtualBox image is stuck at "GRUB loading.". I thought that it might
be more relevant over there, but maybe you guys have some ideas as
well.

did you look also at your generated device.map and grub.cfg files ?

I know that while trying to setup grub stuff etc... for kvm and virtualbox I had issues with auto-generated grub.cfg using loopback devices instead of using disk devices (see loopback keywork in grub.cfg).

I also used disk device (/dev/sda for example) instead of disk uuids in boot menu setup of grub (disk uuids may not be the same when booting on your final host).

Olivier

Here's the link to the mailing list:
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-grub/2013-09/threads.html (not
a direct link, mailman seems to take its time indexing my post)
...and here's what I wrote
---------------------------
Hello everybody

I am developing the debian bootstrapper "build-debian-cloud"
(https://github.com/andsens/build-debian-cloud) and am having some
trouble getting grub to boot my debian installation.
Since I bootstrap from a host system (with chroot etc.) I had to use
some workarounds to get grub installed onto a loopback device
(http://ebroder.net/2009/08/04/installing-grub-onto-a-disk-image/).

The setup consists of a vdi image partitioned with GPT into boot,
root, swap (in that order).
I am unable to get past the "GRUB loading." message when booting the
image in VirtualBox.

I have a hard time figuring out what is wrong with the setup,
especially because the scenario is a bit off the beaten path (mounting
vdi as an network block device, bootstrapping, using dmsetup to fake a
real hdd etc.). So the usual "just run BootRepair" or "reinstall grub"
won't really help to create a stable bootstrapping process.
I have run Ubuntus Boot Repair system to check if anything was wrong,
but I can't seem to find anything. The output is here:
http://paste.ubuntu.com/6115737/

The setup can be fully reproduced by cloning my repo and running
`./build-debian-cloud manifests/virtualbox.manifest.json` (only tested
on debian wheezy).
Simply create a new virtual machine in VBox, attach the resulting
image and boot it.

I would appreciate any help you can offer
Anders Ingemann
---------------------------

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