Bug#492317: (update breaks grub boot (MBR) "Grub Error 28: Selected item can not fit into memory")

[Alan BRASLAU <alan.braslau@cea.fr>]

On Friday 25 July 2008 15:12:42 Robert Millan wrote:
> reassign 492317 kdm
> thanks
Look at
http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=63800

> On Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 02:05:01PM +0200, Alan BRASLAU wrote:
> > Further investigation shows that the error systematically occurs after
> > selecting a grub boot option from kdm. This, persists even after
> > powering-down the system before trying to reboot. Thus, kdm (version
> > 4:4.0.98-1) must be corrupting the grub configuration somehow.
>
> I wasn't aware of this feature.  What is kdm exactly doing?
>
> > I am filing a kdm bug report upstream. Should the present grub bug report
> > be closed?
>
> I can't tell if this is GRUB's fault or not without an accurate description
> of what kdm is doing.

I'm not sure what kdm is doing, as I have not taken a look at the source code.
However, I see the following in /var/log/kdm.log

    GNU GRUB  version 0.97  (640K lower / 3072K upper memory)

       [ Minimal BASH-like line editing is supported.   For
         the   first   word,  TAB  lists  possible  command
         completions.  Anywhere else TAB lists the possible
         completions of a device/filename. ]
grub> savedefault --default=5 --once
grub>

so I see that kdm seems to run grub, and not edit menu.lst or some other hack.

> Let's reassign this bug; later it can be moved back to GRUB if necessary.

The grub and kdm maintainers are much more competent than I. However, I can 
investigate more if no-one else is aware of the problem or cannot reproduce. 
It's a bit time-consuming, so for the moment I am simply avoiding using this 
feature - I'll stick to rebooting into linux :)