Bug#524010: upgrading kernel makes system unbootable, because of invalid grub entries

[Tomasz Chmielewski <mangoo@wpkg.org>]

Package: apt?
Version: in Debian Lenny
Severity: important


I have a system running as a KVM guest. It has a root filesystem on a 
virtio_blk device, which is present to the system as /dev/vda.


Any kernel update using apt-get makes the system unbootable.

For example, these are the entries in /boot/grub/menu.lst _before_ 
kernel upgrade:

title           Debian GNU/Linux, kernel 2.6.26-1-686
root            (hd0,0)
kernel          /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.26-1-686 root=LABEL=dns1-rootfs ro
initrd          /boot/initrd.img-2.6.26-1-686


And here are the entries after "kernel 2.6.26-2-686" was installed. Not 
only the new entry (kernel 2.6.26-2-686) has a bogus root device 
(/dev/sda1 - it doesn't exist on this system), but also entries for old 
kernels were changed.
As a result, the system is not bootable.


title           Debian GNU/Linux, kernel 2.6.26-2-686
root            (hd0,0)
kernel          /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.26-2-686 root=/dev/sda1 ro
initrd          /boot/initrd.img-2.6.26-2-686

title           Debian GNU/Linux, kernel 2.6.26-2-686 (single-user mode)
root            (hd0,0)
kernel          /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.26-2-686 root=/dev/sda1 ro single
initrd          /boot/initrd.img-2.6.26-2-686

title           Debian GNU/Linux, kernel 2.6.26-1-686
root            (hd0,0)
kernel          /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.26-1-686 root=/dev/sda1 ro
initrd          /boot/initrd.img-2.6.26-1-686



--
Tomasz Chmielewski
http://wpkg.org