Upgrade bug: Misconfiguration of menu.lst in test stage of .97 to GRUB 2 upgrade

[Christopher Whaley]

Ubuntu 9.04, kernel 2.6.28.15
Performing GRUB upgrade with debian installer

Hey Guys,

Pardon me if I'm off on the format of this message  -new to mailing lists.

I performed an upgrade from GRUB v. 97 to GRUB 2 today and was initially stymied by an error the install program made in editing my original menu.lst.

After successfully running:

"sudo apt-get install grub2"

from a terminal and ignoring the prompt to make changes to the "kopt" section (in the installer, the field meant to show my current setting was blank - I assumed that leaving it blank and hitting enter would cause the installer to use current UUID settings),

I rebooted the machine and attempted to boot boot through the chainloader to the GRUB2 image and (after restart) to windows. I also attempted to boot from what appeared to be my old item entries for my current install of ubuntu. All attempts were unsuccessful

I was informed that the partitions or files did not exist.

in the menu item "Chainload into GRUB 2" I entered the editing screen and replaced the UUID with the drive number (hd0.4) on the "root" line and in the "root=" section of the "kernel" line.

That did the trick, allowing me to use the GRUB2 image to successfully enter and boot from the GRUB2 menu.

After booting into linux, I ran "sudo upgrade-from-boot-legacy" and had no trouble booting with the GRUB2 boot loader on subsequent boots.

I'm assuming that the installer added the UUIDs incorrectly into the modified menu.lst - maybe the script failed to add "UUID=" to the string before adding it to the "root" line of the boot items?

This is how that menu item looks in my modified menu.lst file (actual UUID obscured):

title        Chainload into GRUB 2
root        XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX
kernel        /boot/grub/core.img

The UUID in that section of the modified menu.lst file does match the UUID of the partition holding the GRUB .97 files.

Hope that helps you guys work out the kinks before people start migrating from ubuntu 9.04 to 9.10.
I think you guys have a great product and am looking forward to exploring the capabilities of this latest version.

chris