grub stage2 crashes if too many menu entries

[Ian Jackson]

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 affects /distros/ubuntu/grub

If I install dapper from the i386 alternate install CD, the installed
bootloader reboots the machine as soon as it is entered. My existing
dapper install on the same machine, which hasn't had grub-install run,
works just fine, as do previous installs of various other systems.

I haven't rerun grub-install in the working dapper because that's not
easily reversible for other testing. But I have run grub-install to a
different partition, like this:
 grub-install --root-directory=/media/hda8 /dev/hda8
and the result was a setup that reboots when grub enters stage2, just
as for the fresh install.

/dev/hda8 is chain loaded from a completely different grub install
which still works; I did try letting the dapper cd install grub in the
mbr but that just made the machine unbootable and forced me to get out
a rescue disk.

I'm going to try knot-1.

Ian.
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[Ian Jackson (ijackson)]

Ian Jackson writes ("[Bug 54041] grub does not boot for me (!)"):
> affects /distros/ubuntu/grub

This bug also exists in knot-1.

Some guideance on the proper approach to debugging it would be very
helpful :-).

Thanks,
Ian.

[Ian Jackson (ijackson)]

root@samual8:/boot/grub# grep title menu.lst | wc -l
1211
root@samual8:/boot/grub# wc menu.lst
 11028 47216 351671 menu.lst
root@samual8:/boot/grub# grep title menu.lst | tail +500 | head -3
title Ubuntu, memtest86+ (on /dev/hda4) (on /dev/hda7) (on /dev/hda8) (on /dev/hda10) (on /dev/hda7) (on /dev/hda8) (on /dev/hda7)
title debian (on /dev/hda5) (on /dev/hda4) (on /dev/hda7) (on /dev/hda8) (on /dev/hda10) (on /dev/hda7) (on /dev/hda8) (on /dev/hda7)
title Memory test (on /dev/hda1) (on /dev/hda4) (on /dev/hda7) (on /dev/hda8) (on /dev/hda10) (on /dev/hda7) (on /dev/hda8) (on /dev/hda7)
root@samual8:/boot/grub#

This seems likely to me to be the cause of the problem. The stage2
should print some kind of comprehensible error message about this;
ideally, it would disregard the excessive entries and let you use the
part it could cope with.

Ian.

[Tormod Volden (tormodvolden)]

I am not sure grub was designed having in mind the possibility of 1211 entries. Maybe update-grub should issue a warning about this.
You should file a bug upstream, I am not sure this will be of great priority in Ubuntu.

[Jérôme Guelfucci (jerome-guelfucci-deactivatedaccount)]

Thank you for your bug report. Do you still have this issue with the latest release of Ubuntu ?

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

This bug still seems to exist (from code inspection) in current gutsy grub. Please leave it open until it's explicitly confirmed to be fixed.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for grub (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]