problem with grub and multiple reiserfs partitions

[Johan . Regin]

Hello all,

I am having having problems getting grub to read files on reiserfs. (I am
using grub version 0.91 and debian stable) Sometimes, for no obvoius
reason, it would print error 15 at boot time, indicating that the
kernel file could not be found. This happened usually when some large
changes had been made on the filesystem, even if the kernel itself was
left intact.
Trial and error has narrowed down the problem, and I believe that grub
sometimes accesses the wrong partition when it is supposed to read a
file. A detailed problem description follows below.

Any help would be much appreciated.
Johan Regin




I have the following partition table: (Created with sfdisk)

Disk /dev/hda: 4865 cylinders, 255 heads, 63 sectors/track
Units = sectors of 512 bytes, counting from 0

   Device Boot    Start       End  #sectors  Id  System
/dev/hda1            63   8193149   8193087  83  Linux
/dev/hda2       8193150  16386299   8193150  83  Linux
/dev/hda3      16386300  24579449   8193150  83  Linux
/dev/hda4      24579450  78156224  53576775   5  Extended
/dev/hda5      24579513  32772599   8193087  83  Linux
/dev/hda6      32772663  40965749   8193087  83  Linux
/dev/hda7      40965813  78156224  37190412  83  Linux

Partitions hda1, hda2 and hda3 have reiserfs file systems.
The other partitions are unformatted.
The filesystem on hda1 contains one (empty) file named 'this-is-hda1',
on hda2 there is a file named 'this-is-hda2' and on hda3
'this-is-hda3'.

Now, if I create a second file on hda2 like this:
mount /dev/hda2 /mnt
dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/badfile bs=1024 count=3716
sync

And then start the grub console:

    GRUB  version 0.91  (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> find /this-is-hda1
 (hd0,0)

grub> find /this-is-hda2
 (hd0,1)

grub> find /this-is-hda3
 (hd0,2)

So far is everything in order. Grub finds the files where it is
supposed to. But if I make the 'badfile' 1 k larger, strange things
happen:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/badfile bs=1024 count=3716
sync
grub

    GRUB  version 0.91  (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> find /this-is-hda1
 (hd0,0)

grub> find /this-is-hda2

Error 15: File not found

grub> find /this-is-hda3
 (hd0,2)

grub> find /this-is-hda1
 (hd0,0)
 (hd0,1)

grub> find /this-is-hda2

Error 15: File not found

grub> find /this-is-hda3
 (hd0,2)

grub> find /this-is-hda1
 (hd0,0)
 (hd0,1)

Suddenly, grub seems a very confused when it comes to reading from
hda2. First it cannot find any file, and then it finds a file on hda1
and claims it is on hda2!? The order in which the 'find' commands are
executed matters, but so far I have not been able to figure out
exactly how.

The same thing happens when booting grub from diskette instead of
running the console.
Included below is the output from reiserfsck on hda2.

(This is the first situation, where everything works)
<-------------reiserfsck, 2002------------->
reiserfsprogs 3.x.1b

Will read-only check consistency of the filesystem on /dev/hda2
Will put log info to 'stdout'

Do you want to run this program?[N/Yes] (note need to type Yes):###########
reiserfsck --check started at Fri Jun 13 19:31:24 2003
###########
Replaying journal..
0 transactions replayed
Checking S+tree..ok
Comparing bitmaps..ok
Checking Semantic tree...
/.   /..    /badfile         /this-is-hda2
              ok
No corruptions found
There are on the filesystem:
     Leaves 1
     Internal nodes 0
     Directories 1
     Other files 2
     Data block pointers 929 (zero of them 0)
     Safe links 0
###########
reiserfsck finished at Fri Jun 13 19:31:37 2003
###########

(This is the second situation, grub has problems reading this filesystem)
<-------------reiserfsck, 2002------------->
reiserfsprogs 3.x.1b

Will read-only check consistency of the filesystem on /dev/hda2
Will put log info to 'stdout'

Do you want to run this program?[N/Yes] (note need to type Yes):###########
reiserfsck --check started at Fri Jun 13 19:27:13 2003
###########
Replaying journal..
0 transactions replayed
Checking S+tree../  1 (of   2)             /  2
(of   2)             ok
Comparing bitmaps..ok
Checking Semantic tree...
/.   /..    /badfile         /this-is-hda2
              ok
No corruptions found
There are on the filesystem:
     Leaves 2
     Internal nodes 1
     Directories 1
     Other files 2
     Data block pointers 930 (zero of them 0)
     Safe links 0
###########
reiserfsck finished at Fri Jun 13 19:27:26 2003
###########