updating kernel through automated update system results in wrong menu.lst for grub

[Keymone]

Binary package hint: adept-updater

each update of kernel modifies my menu.lst with wrong partition numbers

e.g. i have windows on (hd0,1) and ubuntu on (hd0,4) but after i update
kernel it is replaced with (hd0,4) and (hd0,7) so i have to manually fix this
trouble every time

i think it happened after i tried to manage partitions using windows utility

are those values stored somewhere in configuration?

[Duncan Lithgow (duncan-lithgow)]

(I've assigned this to me until we get a bit further, I'm no expert.)

"each update of kernel modifies my menu.lst" of course this is how it should be
"...with wrong partition numbers" but this is not what should be happening.

Could you please attach your menu.lst file? (/boot/grub/menu.lst)

What do you mean when you say "manage partitions using windows utility"? Exactly what did you try to do and what software did you use?

A very important question you need to answer is did it work _before_ you tried to do something with a windows utility? That will help us establish if this is a bug - or a case of fixing something that wasn't Ubuntu's 'fault'.

[Keymone (keymone)]

unfortunately i can't attach menu.lst at the moment but will do that when i get home

here is whole story:

I had 1 hdd with 4 NTFS partitions and 1 ext3 and 1 swap with installed Windows XP
and Ubuntu. Then i bought new hdd and merged 3 NTFS partitions using Partition Magic
utility into 1 partition. So now i have on hd0: 2 NTFS(old with windows and new big
merged from 3), 1 ext3 and 1 swap; hd1: 1 NTFS partition

after that i have problems with updating kernel

i think that merging of partitions changed their numbers but Ubuntu does not know they
were changed

[Duncan Lithgow (duncan-lithgow)]

Yes, merging partitions will cause the problems you have. This can be fixed, but I'm no expert on how to do that. I'm editing the bug title to reflect what you've said. I suggest you open a questions asking how to fix this, you'll need to look into how grub configurations work - it's actually not that hard.

Re-assigning to grub and udev
Status changed to invalid because this is expected behavior at this time - I hope things get smarter, but for now this is not a bug.

[Duncan Lithgow (duncan-lithgow)]

Sorry, not assigning to grub - just udev.
I request that udev look at this and assign status as 'wishlist'

[Scott James Remnant (Canonical) (canonical-scott)]

nothing to do with udev

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

Hi Keymone,

Thank you for taking the time to report this issue and help to improve Ubuntu.

Yes, this is a grub bug; specifically, it's bug #21412, which has already been fixed for Ubuntu 8.04 LTS.

In order for grub to automatically update your boot options going forward, however, you still need to ensure that the "groot" setting in your menu.lst points at the right partition. This is the value that grub uses when generating the entries for new kernels, so it needs to be updated if your partition table changes.