Re: Grub cannot fit into boot record

[Panayiotis Karabassis <panayk@gmail.com>]

Thanks to all.

On 01/14/2012 03:06 PM, tv.debian@googlemail.com wrote:
> 14/01/2012 13:18, Tom H:
>> On Sat, Jan 14, 2012 at 5:06 AM, Panayiotis
>> Karabassis<panayk@gmail.com>  wrote:
>>>
>>> On my desktop, which is running Squeeze, I tried to upgrade some
>>> packages to their Wheezy version. I have now reverted the upgrade, but I
>>> am alarmed.
>>>
>>> One of the packages was grub2 which was at version
>>> 1.98+20100804-14+squeeze1 and was upgraded to 1.99-14.
>>>
>>> To cut a long story short, I ended with an unbootable system. Grub
>>> refused to install on the MBR. I do not remember the message exactly,
>>> but it mentioned that the record was unusually short, and core.img could
>>> not fit into it. Then it told me that the only option was to use
>>> blocklists but that was discouraged as unreliable.
>>>
>>> What am I going to do when Wheezy becomes stable. This is a new
>>> computer.
>>
>> I've both upgraded to and installed wheezy without a hitch so you've
>> either hit some local hitch or stumbled into a bug.
>>
>> It'd be nice to see the actual error message...
>>
>> This must be ab msdos disk. How large is the post-MBR gap? How large
>> is "core.img"?
>>
>>
> 
> Hint for the above:
> 
> ls -lh /boot/grub | grep core.img

It's 29K. But this is for Squeeze's grub, which works! I don't know how
to find out the size of the gap...

> ;-)
> 
> But this is likely not the problem. The disk is under 2TB, so Debian
> installer wouldn't have used gpt automatically, and since you don't know
> what gpt [1] is you probably didn't do it yourself.
> 
> The disk belongs to a raid, right ? Did you try to install grub on all
> raid members ? How did you setup the raid, from the Debian installer or
> otherwise ?

Yes, it's two identical 1TB disks (raid1), and on top of them LVM. The
boot partition is contained in the LVM (I use an initrd). grub-install
works for both disks on Squeeze, and fails for both disks on Wheezy.

The partitions were created by the Squeeze's Debian installer.

> [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table

Thanks. I won't upgrade to Wheezy until it is stable, but what should I
do then if it isn't fixed? Should I go with the blocklists method?

Can Lilo boot from an LVM partition sitting on top of mdadm?

Thanks again.

-- 
Best regards,
    Panayiotis Karabassis