Re: Thinkpad T60P: bricked by grub transition
* Osamu Aoki (osamu@debian.org) wrote:
|> Hi,
Thank you very much for this very helpful message.
|> > I'm writing to this address since I'm not sure what else to do.
|>
|> Hmmm .. Read BTS: http://bugs.debian.org/grub-pc
Yes. I wanted to file a bug (and I will) but at the time I wrote this, I had
no access to the broken system (since it wouldn't boot) to provide the kind
of information that would make a bug-report useful.
|> > The machine was set up in a maximally simple way. Debian is the only
|> > OS that has ever been on it (I bought it as one of the `linux-ready'
|> > laptops from Lenovo and installed Debian as soon as it arrived); it
|> > has always worked beautifully.
|>
|> Why did not you have small stable system without GUI installed as dual
|> boot. That should have saved a lot of time with few MB of disk space.
Because I've never had a need for such a thing. All I want to do, after all,
is to boot into a single linux distribution (Debian). Surely a task so
simple should not require such elaborations. It certainly never has before.
|> > Upon a recent routine upgrade (against current testing), I read the
|> > debconf messages about the transition from grub-legacy to grub2, and
|> > thought that I should try grub2 as I was encouraged to do.
|>
|> Aha ... it could be debconf message throw you out. This is my wild
|> guess. I used to filed bug report on it to call attention to device
|> naming differences. GRUB2 uses (hd0,1) for /dev/sda1 instead of (hd0,0).
It could well be. I did finally discover this fact very late in the process
by way of much googling. I notice now that the change is in fact mentioned
in /usr/share/doc/grub-pc/NEWS.gz at line 98, but I really think it should
be given more prominence and that upgraders should be made more aware of the
risks involved in upgrading from grub to grub2.
|> > And the system is unusable (Ctl-Alt-Delete brings me back to the same
|> > point).
|>
|> Hmmm but you are not getting edit menu
No
|> Oh good you booted.
Well, only from the rescue CD (Debian testing net install) at that
point. The system never got beyond error 15 without the rescue disk.
No menu and no grub command-line prompt.
|> If I were you and if I have to upgrade to GRUB2, I will remove GRUB and
|> then install GRUB2. Before shutting off power, I will double check new
|> GRUB settings.
Yes indeed. But my understanding was that the business of first selecting
Chainload into GRUB 2
from the boot menu was exactly supposed to perform that check. But as you
say, something is broken here (presumably the upgrade-from-grub-legacy
script?).
|> You may also be interested to read.
|>
|> http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debian-reference/ch03.en.html#_stage_2_the_boot_loader
I have indeed read this and you're right; it is very useful. I think that
the debconf message which encourages people to try grub-pc should include
the warning that is printed in large friendly letters in the middle of that
page:
WARNING
Do not play with boot loaders without having bootable rescue media (CD or
floppy) created from images in the grub-rescue-pc package. It will let
you boot your system even without functioning bootloader on the hard disk
|> (If you find bug, please report me or BTS on debian-reference)
I will. Thank you again for your help.
I believe that I have in fact succeeded in fixing the problem, but I'll
report on that in a separate message in case it's useful to others who might
find themselves in this situation.
Cheers,
Jim
PS I'll leave the CC to the pkg-grub-devel list, but it will probably be
rejected since I am not registered there. Perhaps you could forward if you
think it would be helpful?
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