[bug #34344] Grub failed to install on freshly formatted ext4 fs

[Chris Wilson]

URL:
  <http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?34344>

                 Summary: Grub failed to install on freshly formatted ext4 fs
                 Project: GNU GRUB
            Submitted by: gcc
            Submitted on: Tue 20 Sep 2011 14:53:22 GMT
                Category: Installation
                Severity: Major
                Priority: 5 - Normal
              Item Group: Software Error
                  Status: None
                 Privacy: Public
             Assigned to: None
         Originator Name: 
        Originator Email: 
             Open/Closed: Open
         Discussion Lock: Any
                 Release: 
                 Release: 1.98
         Reproducibility: Once
         Planned Release: None

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Details:

Dear GRUB developers,

I'm manually reinstalling grub on a system which has just been re-imaged
(formatted and / extracted from a tarball) to make it bootable, and getting
the
following errors:

address@hidden:~# chroot /mnt/target grub-install --recheck /dev/sda
/usr/sbin/grub-probe: error: cannot find a GRUB drive for /dev/sda2. Check
your device.map.
Auto-detection of a filesystem module failed.
Please specify the module with the option `--modules' explicitly.

address@hidden:~# mount
[...]
/dev/sda2 on /mnt/target type ext4 (rw,relatime,barrier=1,data=ordered)
none on /mnt/target/dev type devtmpfs
(rw,relatime,size=504704k,nr_inodes=126176,mode=755)
none on /mnt/target/proc type proc (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)

address@hidden:~# chroot /mnt/target grub-probe --device /dev/sda2
--target=abstraction
grub-probe: error: cannot find a GRUB drive for /dev/sda2.  Check your
device.map.

address@hidden:~# ls -la /dev/sda*
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 0 Sep 19 13:02 /dev/sda
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 1 Sep 19 13:02 /dev/sda1
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 2 Sep 19 13:02 /dev/sda2

address@hidden:~# chroot /mnt/target strace grub-probe --device /dev/sda2
--target=abstraction
[...]
open("/boot/grub/device.map", O_RDONLY|O_LARGEFILE) = -1 ENOENT (No such file
or directory)
getcwd("/", 4098)                       = 2
[...]
stat64("/dev/sda2", {st_mode=S_IFBLK|0660, st_rdev=makedev(8, 2), ...}) = 0
stat64("/boot/grub/device.map", 0xbfbaddec) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or
directory)
stat64("/dev/sda2", {st_mode=S_IFBLK|0660, st_rdev=makedev(8, 2), ...}) = 0
lstat64("/dev", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=2940, ...}) = 0

lstat64("/dev/sda2", {st_mode=S_IFBLK|0660, st_rdev=makedev(8, 2), ...}) = 0
lstat64("/dev", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=2940, ...}) = 0
lstat64("/dev/sda2", {st_mode=S_IFBLK|0660, st_rdev=makedev(8, 2), ...}) = 0
stat64("/dev/sda2", {st_mode=S_IFBLK|0660, st_rdev=makedev(8, 2), ...}) = 0
uname({sys="Linux", node="system-imager", ...}) = 0
open("/proc/devices", O_RDONLY|O_LARGEFILE) = 3
fstat64(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0444, st_size=0, ...}) = 0
mmap2(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) =
0xb74ec000
read(3, "Character devices:\n  1 mem\n  4 /"..., 1024) = 363
read(3, "", 1024)                       = 0
close(3)                                = 0
munmap(0xb74ec000, 4096)                = 0
open("/dev/sda2", O_RDONLY|O_LARGEFILE) = 3
ioctl(3, 0x301, 0xbfbadc50)             = 0
close(3)                                = 0
getcwd("/", 4098)                       = 2
getcwd("/", 4098)                       = 2
open("/dev/sda", O_RDONLY|O_LARGEFILE)  = 3
fstat64(3, {st_mode=S_IFBLK|0660, st_rdev=makedev(8, 0), ...}) = 0
ioctl(3, BLKGETSIZE64, 0xbfbadc08)      = 0
close(3)                                = 0
gettimeofday({1316439853, 690559}, NULL) = 0
open("/dev/sda", O_RDONLY|O_SYNC|O_LARGEFILE) = 3
ioctl(3, BLKFLSBUF, 0)                  = 0
_llseek(3, 0, [0], SEEK_SET)            = 0
read(3,
"\353c\220\20\216\320\274\0\260\270\0\0\216\330\216\300\373\276\0|\277\0\6\271\0\2\363\244\352!\6\0"...,
512) = 512
read(3,
"R\350(\1t\10V\2763\201\350L\1^\277\364\201f\213-\203}\10\0\17\204\351\0\200|\377\0"...,
3584) = 3584
getcwd("/", 4098)                       = 2
getcwd("/", 4098)                       = 2
getcwd("/", 4098)                       = 2
close(3)                                = 0
gettimeofday({1316439853, 691890}, NULL) = 0
getcwd("/", 4098)                       = 2
getcwd("/", 4098)                       = 2

write(2, "grub-probe: error:", 18grub-probe: error:)      = 18
write(2, " ", 1 )                        = 1
write(2, "cannot find a GRUB drive for /de"..., 62cannot find a GRUB drive for
/dev/sda2.  Check your device.map) = 62
write(2, ".\n", 2.
)                      = 2
exit_group(1)                           = ?

The filesystem was formatted with: mkfs.ext4 -I 128 -E lazy_itable_init=1
/dev/sda2.

I formatted the disk again with ext3 instead (using all the default settings)
and this time I got no errors from grub-install or update-grub.

After that I tried again with mkfs.ext4 and it worked! So this seems to be
some kind of heisenbug.

Any ideas? Could it be related to lazy_itable_init? Could the error message be
more helpful?

Thanks in advance,

Chris Wilson.





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