Bug 463231

Summary: Automatic repair of grub is totally broken
Product: [openSUSE] openSUSE 11.1 Reporter: Grzegorz Kossakowski <registration>
Component: InstallationAssignee: Jiří Suchomel <jsuchome>
Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE QA Contact: Jiri Srain <jsrain>
Severity: Major    
Priority: P5 - None CC: jreidinger
Version: Final   
Target Milestone: ---   
Hardware: Other   
OS: Other   
Whiteboard:
Found By: --- Services Priority:
Business Priority: Blocker: ---
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Description Grzegorz Kossakowski 2009-01-02 09:52:41 UTC 
After upgrading to 11.1 I've installed Windows on another partition. Of course, this broken grub so I've booted openSUSE's DVD in automatic repair mode.

In the past it worked completely automatically repairing grub without any problems. Now the repair process fails to discover any operating systems successfully (including openSUSE itself) and suggests configuration that is bogus.

Moreover, even if I agree to follow its suggestion it tries to install grub twice (it says that it fails for the first time) and informs me that second attempt was successful. As you probably guess, nothing gets installed, in fact.

I had to install grub using command line, and only after logging into openSUSE I used Yast2 to fix my grub configuration. Yast2 didn't have any problem with detecting new operating system and proposing *correct* grub configuration.

Here is my disk layout:
grek-laptop:~ # fdisk -l /dev/sda

Disk /dev/sda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000ca17b

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1        3518    28258303+   7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2            3519        6129    20972855   83  Linux
/dev/sda3            6130       14593    67987080    5  Extended
/dev/sda5            6130        6391     2104483+  82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6            6392       14593    65882531   83  Linux


(/dev/sda2 is not used at the moment)
Comment 1 Alexander Orlovskyy 2009-01-14 14:22:07 UTC 
Did you used the live cd for recovering grub ?
Comment 2 Grzegorz Kossakowski 2009-01-14 17:05:13 UTC 
Original reports says:
"I've booted openSUSE's DVD in automatic repair mode."

So I've used installation DVD.
Comment 3 Josef Reidinger 2009-01-19 09:10:06 UTC 
OK, one question...do you use repair from DVD menu or you use install and there on second screen use repair (there is install new, upgrade and repair)? It looks like in first menu is not loaded modules for extended partitions.
Comment 4 Grzegorz Kossakowski 2009-01-22 09:59:09 UTC 
I used repair directly from DVD menu.

I guess choosing one way or another should result in the same repair wizard.
Comment 5 Josef Reidinger 2009-01-22 10:52:46 UTC 
No, it is different, second load more kernel modules. reassign to yast2-repair maintainer, maybe duplicate. (I can replicate it also in virtual environment)
Comment 6 Jiří Suchomel 2009-01-22 13:21:44 UTC 
Yes, this is basically bug #450944. Although the problem was different, using repair from the installation sequence would probably help, because that one behaves differently.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 450944 ***
Comment 7 Grzegorz Kossakowski 2009-01-22 15:18:40 UTC 
What I wanted to say in my last comment is that both options should work in the same way from user point of view.

Actually, is there any reason why there are two different ways for achieving the same and why they differ in functionality? Exactly this kind of issues caused me to go to console and fix grub manually.
Comment 8 Jiří Suchomel 2009-01-23 06:39:20 UTC 
You are right; I didn't wrote that it is not a bug.