Re: Strange USB behaviour; Grub fails to read disks when no USB keyboard is connected

[Jimmie Mayfield]

Hi.  For what it's worth, I also see USB-related weirdness with Grub 
2.02.  In my case, I'm running it on an IBM/Lenovo x3100M4 workstation 
(OpenSuSE LEAP in my case). I use a USB keyboard and a USB mouse.

*  If I don't touch the keyboard and let the timer expire so that Grub 
automatically selects the default (first) item, the system reboots 
during the hand-off to the kernel.  I don't see any kernel messages 
before the reboot.

* If I press <ENTER> at the main menu (no other key presses) to select 
the default item, the same reboot behavior occurs.

* If I press UP/DOWN at the main menu to disable the timer and then 
select the default item, the kernel boots fine.

Finally, if my USB headphone amp is connected, the system reboots after 
Grub starts but before the Grub menu appears.  I can, however, boot if a 
USB-rs232 adapter is connected.

So I have to make sure my headphone amp is disconnected when I reboot 
and I have to be at the console to manually press UP/DOWN before 
selecting the kernel to boot at the Grub menu.  Otherwise my system 
enters a reboot loop.  This, of course, means that remote rebooting 
appears to be impossible.



On 5/13/19 06:34, Matschek wrote:
> Hi Grub Folks,
>
> I am using Grub (2.02) to boot a Debian (OpenMediaVault) installed on an USB
> stick.
> This is working fine as long as a USB keyboard is connected. Sound stange,
> but please read on. As soon as I try to start the machine with no other USB
> devices (only the USB key) connected Grub fails after reading the config
> file and before starting the OS loader:
>
> -----
> Error: failure reading sector 0x802 from 'hd0'.
> Error: no such partition.
> Error: no such partition.
> Error: no such partition.
> Error: no such partition.
> Error: no such partition.
> Press any key to continue...
>    Failed to boot both default and fallback entries.
> Press any key to continue...
> -----
>
>
> I edited the boot options via "e" and tried several variants but with no
> luck. Grub is not able to find its own resources, even an "ls" command
> fails, like all internal commands shown with [TAB]:
>
> -----
> grub> ls
> no such partition.
> -----
>
>
> If I reboot with connected USB keyboard, everything is fine again. Reboot
> with a PS/2 keyboard - boot fails again.
> If seems grub loses the USB device access somewhere in stage2 (as far as I
> understand the config file is read in stage2, which is shown correctly)
>
> What can I do? Is there some debugging/verbose option I can set so see
> what's going wrong? Any extra option I should use for grub-install in my
> scenario?
>
> Regards,
> Matthias Philipp
>
>
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