Upgrade to Beta 1 does not install grub to partition

[Zak B. Elep]

Description: Ubuntu oneiric (development branch)
Release: 11.10

grub-pc:
  Installed: 1.99-11ubuntu1
  Candidate: 1.99-11ubuntu1
  Version table:
 *** 1.99-11ubuntu1 0
        500 http://tw.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric/main i386 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

Prior setup is a Natty Install on /dev/sda5, with grub2 installed on that same partition, as laptop has a Windows installation in /dev/sda2, and the Windows boot manager is used as the main, chainloading to grub when Ubuntu is desired.

Upgrade to Oneiric Beta 1 seems to have a grub2 that does not allow itself being installed in /dev/sda5, as seen in /var/log/dist-upgrade/apt-term.log...

/usr/sbin/grub-setup: warn: Attempting to install GRUB to a partitionless disk or to a partition. This is a BAD idea..
/usr/sbin/grub-setup: warn: Embedding is not possible. GRUB can only be installed in this setup by using blocklists. However, blocklists are UNRELIABLE and their use is discouraged..
/usr/sbin/grub-setup: error: will not proceed with blocklists.

...first reboot after upgrade left the Windows boot manager intact, but choosing to boot Ubuntu with it leads to a blank screen, meaning there's no grub2 in /dev/sda5; I find it odd that the upgrade removed it.

Workaround was to boot with a rescue CD (e.g. Natty live CD) and chroot to /dev/sda5 to do `grub-install /dev/sda'; while this works now, this may be undesirable for those using non-Linux boot loaders as their primary boot manager.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.10
Package: grub-pc 1.99-11ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.0.0-9.15-generic 3.0.3
Uname: Linux 3.0.0-9-generic i686
NonfreeKernelModules: wl fglrx
Architecture: i386
Date: Fri Sep 2 01:40:44 2011
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" - Release i386 (20110427.1)
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_PH:en
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_PH.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: grub2
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to oneiric on 2011-09-01 (0 days ago)

[Antti Kaijanmäki (kaijanmaki)]

bug #851012 might be a duplicate

[Marcus Tomlinson (marcustomlinson)]

This release of Ubuntu is no longer receiving maintenance updates. If this is still an issue on a maintained version of Ubuntu please let us know.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for grub2 (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]