During installation, lilo.conf entries are not correctly converted to grub entries

[Till Kamppeter]

I have a laptop (Samsung X10plus with NVidia graphics card) with Mandriva 2006 on it. This distro uses LILO to generate the boot menu. I have added Edgy on a free partition (installation started from knot-2 live CD). All of the entries in the /etc/lilo.conf of Mandriva are converted to entries in /boot/grub/menu.lst of Ubuntu, only the "vga=791" entries are not overtaken. This leads the Mandriva kernels to start without frame buffer and then the boot hangs as soon as the user space part of bootsplash is started (directly after start of USB). If I manually add "vga=791" to the ends of the kernel command lines of all Mandriva entries in /boot/grub/menu.lst I can boot into Mandriva without any problems.

So what has to be fixed is if a line "vga=XXX" is found in the /etc/lilo.conf of the already installed distribution the same "vga=XXX" needs to be added to the kernel command line of the corresponding entry in Ubuntu's /boot/grub/menu.lst

[Matt Zimmerman (mdz)]

Please attach your old lilo.conf and the menu.lst generated by the installer

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

Here is the /etc/lilo.conf of the Mandriva 2006 installation:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# File generated by DrakX/drakboot
# WARNING: do not forget to run lilo after modifying this file

default="linux"
boot=/dev/hda
map=/boot/map
keytable=/boot/uk.klt
menu-scheme=wb:bw:wb:bw
prompt
nowarn
timeout=100
message=/boot/message
image=/boot/vmlinuz
 label="linux"
 root=/dev/hda5
 initrd=/boot/initrd.img
 append="resume=/dev/hda6 splash=silent"
 vga=791
image=/boot/vmlinuz
 label="linux-nonfb"
 root=/dev/hda5
 initrd=/boot/initrd.img
 append="resume=/dev/hda6"
image=/boot/vmlinuz
 label="failsafe"
 root=/dev/hda5
 initrd=/boot/initrd.img
 append="failsafe resume=/dev/hda6"
image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.12-12.mm.1mdk-i686-up-4GB
 label="2612i686up4G-12mm1"
 root=/dev/hda5
 initrd=/boot/initrd-2.6.12-12.mm.1mdk-i686-up-4GB.img
 append="resume=/dev/hda6 splash=silent"
 vga=791
image=/boot/vmlinuz-i686-up-4GB
 label="linux-i686-up-4GB"
 root=/dev/hda5
 initrd=/boot/initrd-i686-up-4GB.img
 append="resume=/dev/hda6 splash=silent"
 vga=791
image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.12-17mdk-i686-up-4GB
 label="2612i686up4G-17"
 root=/dev/hda5
 initrd=/boot/initrd-2.6.12-17mdk-i686-up-4GB.img
 append="resume=/dev/hda6 splash=silent"
 vga=791
image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.12-12mdk-i686-up-4GB
 label="2612i686up4G-12"
 root=/dev/hda5
 initrd=/boot/initrd-2.6.12-12mdk-i686-up-4GB.img
 append="resume=/dev/hda6 splash=silent"
 vga=791
image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.12-24mdk-i686-up-4GB
 label="2612i686up4G-24"
 root=/dev/hda5
 initrd=/boot/initrd-2.6.12-24mdk-i686-up-4GB.img
 append="resume=/dev/hda6 splash=silent"
 vga=791
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

and here is the resulting /boot/grub/menu.lst of the Ubuntu Edge installation

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# menu.lst - See: grub(8), info grub, update-grub(8)
# grub-install(8), grub-floppy(8),
# grub-md5-crypt, /usr/share/doc/grub
# and /usr/share/doc/grub-doc/.

## default num
# Set the default entry to the entry number NUM. Numbering starts from 0, and
# the entry number 0 is the default if the command is not used.
#
# You can specify 'saved' instead of a number. In this case, the default entry
# is the entry saved with the command 'savedefault'.
# WARNING: If you are using dmraid do not change this entry to 'saved' or your
# array will desync and will not let you boot your system.
default 0

## timeout sec
# Set a timeout, in SEC seconds, before automatically booting the default entry
# (normally the first entry defined).
timeout 10

## hiddenmenu
# Hides the menu by default (press ESC to see the menu)
#hiddenmenu

# Pretty colours
#color cyan/blue white/blue

## password ['--md5'] passwd
# If used in the first section of a menu file, disable all interactive editing
# control (menu entry editor and command-line) and entries protected by the
# command 'lock'
# e.g. password topsecret
# password --md5 $1$gLhU0/$aW78kHK1QfV3P2b2znUoe/
# password topsecret

#
# examples
#
# title ...

[Siegfried Gevatter (rainct)]

It's now 9 months since the latest comment on this bug. Could you please confirm if this issue still happens?

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

Unfortunately, I do not have any box using LILO any more where I could test converting top Grub via a Ubuntu installation. The installation which I did these 9 months ago was converting my only LILO box. After that I have only "apt-get dist-upgrade"d and once installed on a new PC without any OS, so no more LILO conversions.

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

The only thing which has to be checked here is already de4scribed in the initial posting: Overtake the "vga=XXX" lines of the lilo.conf into the kernel command lines of the menu.lst. So check whether the current version of the installer/LILO->Grub converter does this.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

Confirmed with current os-prober; it doesn't know how to deal with the vga= option, although had it been in append= it would have worked fine.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

Fixed upstream.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

os-prober (1.21) unstable; urgency=low

  [ Joey Hess ]
  * Remove the largely obsolete --mounted option.

  [ Colin Watson ]
  * Recognise filesystems of type 'fuse' as applicable to the Microsoft
    probe (thanks, Agostino Russo).
  * Handle vga= options in lilo.conf (LP: #59525).

 -- Colin Watson <email address hidden> Tue, 31 Jul 2007 17:10:28 +0100