Update-manager tries to install grub-2 update on system with legacy grub

[Peter Belew]

Binary package hint: update-manager

This system was updated online to Karmic from 9.04, leaving the legacy grub in place (0.97-29ubuntu45).

When I ran Update Manager today, one of the listed upgrades was for grub-common (version 2) - as follows:

Changes for the versions:
1.97~beta3-1ubuntu6
1.97~beta3-1ubuntu7

Version 1.97~beta3-1ubuntu7:

  * debian/grub-common.init: /boot/grub/grubenv sometimes seems to end up
    zero-sized for some reason. If it is, just delete it (LP: #439784).

I'm not sure what files are involved, other than possibly /boot/grub/grubenv, but this seems inappropriate for a system which is using the legacy grub. The upgrade program should detect the fact that the legacy grub is installed, and leave it alone, unless the files being updated are appropriate for the 0.97 grub.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Mon Oct 5 10:37:39 2009
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
Package: update-manager 1:0.125.6
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_US.UTF-8
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-11.38-generic
SourcePackage: update-manager
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-11-generic i686

[Peter Belew (peterbe)]

This sort of error would especially be a problem for someone updating with apt-get or aptitude, without carefully examining the list of updates.

[to be removed (liw)]

Yeah, that should happen. I assume that update-manager doesn't have any special code for handling grub in
normal upgrades, and that grub's and grub-pc's dependency fields should take care of not replacing one package with the other.
Thus, I'll reassign this to grub-pc; please reassign back or to a more appropriate package as necessary.

[Felix Zielcke (fzielcke)]

Am Mittwoch, den 07.10.2009, 15:41 +0000 schrieb Lars Wirzenius:
> Yeah, that should happen. I assume that update-manager doesn't have any special code for handling grub in
> normal upgrades, and that grub's and grub-pc's dependency fields should take care of not replacing one package with the other.
> Thus, I'll reassign this to grub-pc; please reassign back or to a more appropriate package as necessary.

The GRUB Legacy and GRUB 2 packages already conflict against each other.
The only exception is grub-common, which is generated from grub2 but
even grub depends on it because of grub-probe.
It's not at all a bug that it's installed on a system which still uses
GRUB Legacy.

I leave it to Colin to close the bug or reassign it.

>The upgrade program should detect the fact that the legacy grub is
>installed, and leave it alone, unless the files being updated are
>appropriate for the 0.97 grub.

For this to be implemented someone would need to maintain a list if that
grub-common update is needed also for GRUB Legacy users or not.

--
Felix Zielcke
Proud Debian Maintainer and GNU GRUB developer

[Peter Belew (peterbe)]

What actually happens, is that the update keeps the 0.9x grub, but
updates the format of /boot/grub/menu.lst to a format which seems to
me to be a bit less human-friendly, using hex labels like in recent
installer-created versions of /etc/fstab. So I did let the upgrade
happen, finally.

I would assume that there's a new process for updating the 'old' menu.lst.

On Wed, Oct 7, 2009 at 8:41 AM, Lars Wirzenius <email address hidden> wrote:
> Yeah, that should happen. I assume that update-manager doesn't have any special code for handling grub in
> normal upgrades, and that grub's and grub-pc's dependency fields should take care of not replacing one package with the other.
> Thus, I'll reassign this to grub-pc; please reassign back or to a more appropriate package as necessary.
>
> ** Package changed: update-manager (Ubuntu) => grub2 (Ubuntu)
>
> --
> Update-manager tries to install grub-2 update on system with legacy grub
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/443326
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

[Peter Belew (peterbe)]

The reason for my concern about this was that I have some systems
which are multiboot, including FreeBSD in particular - while this is
well-documented for legacy Grub, it's not so much so for OSes like
FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, etc. I filed a separate bug, Bug #432254:
FreeBSD not detected by os-prober, about this. I did get it working
for FreeBSD, but apparently this is not documented still. Not having
the other two BSD variants, I don't know if they are supported. My
systems with this kind of configuration are test systems for Karmic
etc., so I'm trying to make good use of a limited resource.

On Wed, Oct 7, 2009 at 11:43 AM, Peter Belew <email address hidden> wrote:
> What actually happens, is that the update keeps the 0.9x grub, but
> updates the format of /boot/grub/menu.lst to a format which seems to
> me to be a bit less human-friendly, using hex labels like in recent
> installer-created versions of /etc/fstab. So I did let the upgrade
> happen, finally.
>
> I would assume that there's a new process for updating the 'old' menu.lst.
>
> On Wed, Oct 7, 2009 at 8:41 AM, Lars Wirzenius <email address hidden> wrote:
>> Yeah, that should happen. I assume that update-manager doesn't have any special code for handling grub in
>> normal upgrades, and that grub's and grub-pc's dependency fields should take care of not replacing one package with the other.
>> Thus, I'll reassign this to grub-pc; please reassign back or to a more appropriate package as necessary.
>>
>> ** Package changed: update-manager (Ubuntu) => grub2 (Ubuntu)
>>
>> --
>> Update-manager tries to install grub-2 update on system with legacy grub
>> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/443326
>> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
>> of the bug.
>>
>

[Felix Zielcke (fzielcke)]

Am Freitag, den 09.10.2009, 00:00 +0000 schrieb Peter Belew:
> The reason for my concern about this was that I have some systems
> which are multiboot, including FreeBSD in particular - while this is
> well-documented for legacy Grub, it's not so much so for OSes like
> FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, etc. I filed a separate bug, Bug #432254:
> FreeBSD not detected by os-prober, about this. I did get it working
> for FreeBSD, but apparently this is not documented still. Not having
> the other two BSD variants, I don't know if they are supported. My
> systems with this kind of configuration are test systems for Karmic
> etc., so I'm trying to make good use of a limited resource.

All multiboot compatible payloads can be loaded with the multiboot
command.
And for FreeBSD/NetBSD/OpenBSD just
see /usr/share/doc/grub-pc/examples/grub.cfg for example menu entrys.

--
Felix Zielcke
Proud Debian Maintainer and GNU GRUB developer

[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.]