Re: problem installing grub to linux mint partition

[Pascal Hambourg]

Le 05/06/2018 à 15:03, David H. Durgee a écrit :
> Finally I ran:
>
> sudo chattr +i /boot/grub/i386-pc/core.img
>
> Per Arch Linux Wiki GRUB Tips & Tricks this should prevent the critical 
> blocklist for GRUB from being modified and breaking GRUB.

I guess you are referring to this :
<https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GRUB/Tips_and_tricks#Install_to_partition_or_partitionless_disk>

Setting the immutable attribute protects the file against deletion or 
modification by any user (including root), but I doubt that it prevents 
its data blocks from being moved around internally by the filesystem 
itself, which breaks the block list. For instance it does not prevent 
resize2fs from reducing an ext4 filesystem to a size which requires 
moving the data blocks of an immutable file.

Another remark about the following quote :

"in case of partition or a partitionless disk is that GRUB relies on 
embedded blocklists in the partition bootsector to locate the 
/boot/grub/i386-pc/core.img file and the prefix directory /boot/grub."

I must say that the latter is wrong. GRUB does not rely on blocklists to 
locate /boot/grub. Reading filesystem metadata such as a directory 
requires filesystem support, so using blocklists would make no sense.