Activity log for bug #576724

Date Who What changed Old value New value Message
2010-05-07 00:40:34 Erick Brunzell bug added bug
2010-05-08 16:39:41 Erick Brunzell grub2 (Ubuntu): status New Confirmed
2010-05-26 23:34:28 Erick Brunzell summary Ubuntu grub2 dist-upgrades result in confusion Ubuntu Lucid grub2 dist-upgrades result in confusion
2010-06-09 08:22:14 Jan removed subscriber Jan-Christoph Borchardt
2010-06-11 00:00:15 Steve Langasek grub2 (Ubuntu): importance Undecided High
2010-06-11 00:00:15 Steve Langasek grub2 (Ubuntu): status Confirmed Triaged
2010-06-11 00:00:15 Steve Langasek grub2 (Ubuntu): milestone ubuntu-10.04.1
2010-06-11 00:14:08 Steve Langasek nominated for series Ubuntu Maverick
2010-06-11 00:14:08 Steve Langasek bug task added grub2 (Ubuntu Maverick)
2010-06-22 21:38:36 Steve Langasek nominated for series Ubuntu Lucid
2010-06-22 21:38:36 Steve Langasek bug task added grub2 (Ubuntu Lucid)
2010-06-22 21:38:54 Steve Langasek grub2 (Ubuntu Lucid): milestone ubuntu-10.04.1
2010-06-22 21:39:01 Steve Langasek grub2 (Ubuntu Maverick): milestone ubuntu-10.04.1
2010-06-22 21:39:05 Steve Langasek grub2 (Ubuntu Lucid): status New Triaged
2010-06-22 21:39:09 Steve Langasek grub2 (Ubuntu Maverick): status Triaged Invalid
2010-06-22 21:39:19 Steve Langasek grub2 (Ubuntu Lucid): importance Undecided High
2010-06-23 23:57:13 Erick Brunzell attachment added RESULTS4.txt.tar.gz http://launchpadlibrarian.net/50824812/RESULTS4.txt.tar.gz
2010-06-29 10:48:06 Colin Watson grub2 (Ubuntu Maverick): status Invalid Triaged
2010-06-29 11:20:41 Colin Watson grub2 (Ubuntu Maverick): assignee Colin Watson (cjwatson)
2010-06-29 11:20:46 Colin Watson grub2 (Ubuntu Lucid): assignee Colin Watson (cjwatson)
2010-06-30 10:18:18 Launchpad Janitor branch linked lp:~ubuntu-core-dev/ubuntu/maverick/grub2/maverick
2010-06-30 10:31:21 Colin Watson grub2 (Ubuntu Lucid): status Triaged Fix Committed
2010-06-30 10:31:26 Colin Watson grub2 (Ubuntu Maverick): status Triaged Fix Committed
2010-06-30 10:31:32 Colin Watson grub2 (Ubuntu Lucid): status Fix Committed Triaged
2010-06-30 11:03:34 Launchpad Janitor branch linked lp:~ubuntu-core-dev/ubuntu/lucid/grub2/lucid
2010-06-30 11:47:44 Colin Watson grub2 (Ubuntu Lucid): status Triaged In Progress
2010-06-30 13:08:46 Colin Watson description Binary package hint: grub-pc This is a horrible way to file a bug report and I'm aware of that, but this needs to be considered. Throughout various upgrade and/or update procedures in Ubuntu and it's variants the user gets a display asking where to install grub(2). There is a suggestion that if in doubt to install to the mbr of all drives. Unfortunately most new (and some old) users have no idea how drives/partitions are designated in Ubuntu, and they're clueless as to what an mbr is! So basically you see a screen that says, "if in doubt select all", and you do so. Now, I'm aware those are not the exact words but I've been following (and trying to help folks fix) these problems since Lucid was released. It's particularly troublesome when someone installs grub2 to an NTFS partition with a Win OS so I'd at least suggest making grub installation to an NTFS (or any FAT) partition very difficult. Honestly I'm not sure what the solution should be, but I know Colin Watson deals with a lot of these grub2 issues and I've come to trust his judgment. Consider the following options: #1: Display nothing but drives, that is "sda", "sdb", etc, and NO individual partitions. But create another "advanced" tab/option to allow installation to a partition. #2: Increase the amount of text explaining the difference between drives and partitions, why it's a bad idea to install to a partition etc. IMHO that's a horrible option. (The more text the less likely a new user is to read it.) #3: Figure out a way to always have grub(2) install itself where it was to begin with. (maybe a bad idea if the original install was wrong.) While I think option #1 is great I have no idea how complicated that would be. Does any of that make sense? I'd be glad to test any potential "fixes" :^) Binary package hint: grub-pc This is a horrible way to file a bug report and I'm aware of that, but this needs to be considered. Throughout various upgrade and/or update procedures in Ubuntu and its variants the user gets a display asking where to install grub(2). There is a suggestion that if in doubt to install to the mbr of all drives. Unfortunately most new (and some old) users have no idea how drives/partitions are designated in Ubuntu, and they're clueless as to what an mbr is! So basically you see a screen that says, "if in doubt select all", and you do so. Now, I'm aware those are not the exact words but I've been following (and trying to help folks fix) these problems since Lucid was released. It's particularly troublesome when someone installs grub2 to an NTFS partition with a Win OS so I'd at least suggest making grub installation to an NTFS (or any FAT) partition very difficult. Honestly I'm not sure what the solution should be, but I know Colin Watson deals with a lot of these grub2 issues and I've come to trust his judgment. Consider the following options: #1: Display nothing but drives, that is "sda", "sdb", etc, and NO individual partitions. But create another "advanced" tab/option to allow installation to a partition. #2: Increase the amount of text explaining the difference between drives and partitions, why it's a bad idea to install to a partition etc. IMHO that's a horrible option. (The more text the less likely a new user is to read it.) #3: Figure out a way to always have grub(2) install itself where it was to begin with. (maybe a bad idea if the original install was wrong.) While I think option #1 is great I have no idea how complicated that would be. Does any of that make sense? I'd be glad to test any potential "fixes" :^) SRU justification: IMPACT: I concur with the problems described above. We often see people turning up in #grub who've been affected by this, and it's often the least capable users who are suddenly hit by an unbootable Windows system which can be quite a challenge to fix. We need to clear this up in a stable update to limit the damage. DEVELOPMENT BRANCH: While I haven't uploaded this yet due to the Alpha-2 freeze, I've committed it to the Maverick branch for grub2 1.98+20100614-2ubuntu4: http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-core-dev/ubuntu/maverick/grub2/maverick/revision/1999 PATCH: http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-core-dev/ubuntu/lucid/grub2/lucid/revision/1973 (plus debconf-updatepo). TEST CASE: The simplest way to force this confusing screen to appear is by running 'sudo dpkg-reconfigure grub-pc'. The broken state is that all partitions are offered, including Windows partitions which will be broken by installing GRUB to them; the desired state is described in comment 56. REGRESSION POTENTIAL: I can hardly have made the dialog any more harmfully misleading, but if I got my change badly enough wrong then upgrades might break (along with dpkg-reconfigure). I think it would be worth testing an upgrade from Karmic on a two-disk system and making sure that the experience is vaguely reasonable.
2010-06-30 13:23:53 Colin Watson description Binary package hint: grub-pc This is a horrible way to file a bug report and I'm aware of that, but this needs to be considered. Throughout various upgrade and/or update procedures in Ubuntu and its variants the user gets a display asking where to install grub(2). There is a suggestion that if in doubt to install to the mbr of all drives. Unfortunately most new (and some old) users have no idea how drives/partitions are designated in Ubuntu, and they're clueless as to what an mbr is! So basically you see a screen that says, "if in doubt select all", and you do so. Now, I'm aware those are not the exact words but I've been following (and trying to help folks fix) these problems since Lucid was released. It's particularly troublesome when someone installs grub2 to an NTFS partition with a Win OS so I'd at least suggest making grub installation to an NTFS (or any FAT) partition very difficult. Honestly I'm not sure what the solution should be, but I know Colin Watson deals with a lot of these grub2 issues and I've come to trust his judgment. Consider the following options: #1: Display nothing but drives, that is "sda", "sdb", etc, and NO individual partitions. But create another "advanced" tab/option to allow installation to a partition. #2: Increase the amount of text explaining the difference between drives and partitions, why it's a bad idea to install to a partition etc. IMHO that's a horrible option. (The more text the less likely a new user is to read it.) #3: Figure out a way to always have grub(2) install itself where it was to begin with. (maybe a bad idea if the original install was wrong.) While I think option #1 is great I have no idea how complicated that would be. Does any of that make sense? I'd be glad to test any potential "fixes" :^) SRU justification: IMPACT: I concur with the problems described above. We often see people turning up in #grub who've been affected by this, and it's often the least capable users who are suddenly hit by an unbootable Windows system which can be quite a challenge to fix. We need to clear this up in a stable update to limit the damage. DEVELOPMENT BRANCH: While I haven't uploaded this yet due to the Alpha-2 freeze, I've committed it to the Maverick branch for grub2 1.98+20100614-2ubuntu4: http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-core-dev/ubuntu/maverick/grub2/maverick/revision/1999 PATCH: http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-core-dev/ubuntu/lucid/grub2/lucid/revision/1973 (plus debconf-updatepo). TEST CASE: The simplest way to force this confusing screen to appear is by running 'sudo dpkg-reconfigure grub-pc'. The broken state is that all partitions are offered, including Windows partitions which will be broken by installing GRUB to them; the desired state is described in comment 56. REGRESSION POTENTIAL: I can hardly have made the dialog any more harmfully misleading, but if I got my change badly enough wrong then upgrades might break (along with dpkg-reconfigure). I think it would be worth testing an upgrade from Karmic on a two-disk system and making sure that the experience is vaguely reasonable. Binary package hint: grub-pc This is a horrible way to file a bug report and I'm aware of that, but this needs to be considered. Throughout various upgrade and/or update procedures in Ubuntu and its variants the user gets a display asking where to install grub(2). There is a suggestion that if in doubt to install to the mbr of all drives. Unfortunately most new (and some old) users have no idea how drives/partitions are designated in Ubuntu, and they're clueless as to what an mbr is! So basically you see a screen that says, "if in doubt select all", and you do so. Now, I'm aware those are not the exact words but I've been following (and trying to help folks fix) these problems since Lucid was released. It's particularly troublesome when someone installs grub2 to an NTFS partition with a Win OS so I'd at least suggest making grub installation to an NTFS (or any FAT) partition very difficult. Honestly I'm not sure what the solution should be, but I know Colin Watson deals with a lot of these grub2 issues and I've come to trust his judgment. Consider the following options: #1: Display nothing but drives, that is "sda", "sdb", etc, and NO individual partitions. But create another "advanced" tab/option to allow installation to a partition. #2: Increase the amount of text explaining the difference between drives and partitions, why it's a bad idea to install to a partition etc. IMHO that's a horrible option. (The more text the less likely a new user is to read it.) #3: Figure out a way to always have grub(2) install itself where it was to begin with. (maybe a bad idea if the original install was wrong.) While I think option #1 is great I have no idea how complicated that would be. Does any of that make sense? I'd be glad to test any potential "fixes" :^) SRU justification: IMPACT: I concur with the problems described above. We often see people turning up in #grub who've been affected by this, and it's often the least capable users who are suddenly hit by an unbootable Windows system which can be quite a challenge to fix. We need to clear this up in a stable update to limit the damage. DEVELOPMENT BRANCH: While I haven't uploaded this yet due to the Alpha-2 freeze, I've committed it to the Maverick branch for grub2 1.98+20100614-2ubuntu4: http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-core-dev/ubuntu/maverick/grub2/maverick/revision/1999 PATCH: http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-core-dev/ubuntu/lucid/grub2/lucid/revision/1973 (plus debconf-updatepo). TEST CASE: The simplest way to force this confusing screen to appear is by running 'sudo dpkg-reconfigure grub-pc'. The broken state is that all partitions are offered, including Windows partitions which will be broken by installing GRUB to them; the desired state is described in comment 56. REGRESSION POTENTIAL: I can hardly have made the dialog any more harmfully misleading, but if I got my change badly enough wrong then upgrades might break (along with dpkg-reconfigure). I think it would be worth testing an upgrade from Karmic on a two-disk system and making sure that the experience is vaguely reasonable. You should be able to save time by testing this together with bug 580408.
2010-06-30 13:25:38 Colin Watson description Binary package hint: grub-pc This is a horrible way to file a bug report and I'm aware of that, but this needs to be considered. Throughout various upgrade and/or update procedures in Ubuntu and its variants the user gets a display asking where to install grub(2). There is a suggestion that if in doubt to install to the mbr of all drives. Unfortunately most new (and some old) users have no idea how drives/partitions are designated in Ubuntu, and they're clueless as to what an mbr is! So basically you see a screen that says, "if in doubt select all", and you do so. Now, I'm aware those are not the exact words but I've been following (and trying to help folks fix) these problems since Lucid was released. It's particularly troublesome when someone installs grub2 to an NTFS partition with a Win OS so I'd at least suggest making grub installation to an NTFS (or any FAT) partition very difficult. Honestly I'm not sure what the solution should be, but I know Colin Watson deals with a lot of these grub2 issues and I've come to trust his judgment. Consider the following options: #1: Display nothing but drives, that is "sda", "sdb", etc, and NO individual partitions. But create another "advanced" tab/option to allow installation to a partition. #2: Increase the amount of text explaining the difference between drives and partitions, why it's a bad idea to install to a partition etc. IMHO that's a horrible option. (The more text the less likely a new user is to read it.) #3: Figure out a way to always have grub(2) install itself where it was to begin with. (maybe a bad idea if the original install was wrong.) While I think option #1 is great I have no idea how complicated that would be. Does any of that make sense? I'd be glad to test any potential "fixes" :^) SRU justification: IMPACT: I concur with the problems described above. We often see people turning up in #grub who've been affected by this, and it's often the least capable users who are suddenly hit by an unbootable Windows system which can be quite a challenge to fix. We need to clear this up in a stable update to limit the damage. DEVELOPMENT BRANCH: While I haven't uploaded this yet due to the Alpha-2 freeze, I've committed it to the Maverick branch for grub2 1.98+20100614-2ubuntu4: http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-core-dev/ubuntu/maverick/grub2/maverick/revision/1999 PATCH: http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-core-dev/ubuntu/lucid/grub2/lucid/revision/1973 (plus debconf-updatepo). TEST CASE: The simplest way to force this confusing screen to appear is by running 'sudo dpkg-reconfigure grub-pc'. The broken state is that all partitions are offered, including Windows partitions which will be broken by installing GRUB to them; the desired state is described in comment 56. REGRESSION POTENTIAL: I can hardly have made the dialog any more harmfully misleading, but if I got my change badly enough wrong then upgrades might break (along with dpkg-reconfigure). I think it would be worth testing an upgrade from Karmic on a two-disk system and making sure that the experience is vaguely reasonable. You should be able to save time by testing this together with bug 580408. Binary package hint: grub-pc This is a horrible way to file a bug report and I'm aware of that, but this needs to be considered. Throughout various upgrade and/or update procedures in Ubuntu and its variants the user gets a display asking where to install grub(2). There is a suggestion that if in doubt to install to the mbr of all drives. Unfortunately most new (and some old) users have no idea how drives/partitions are designated in Ubuntu, and they're clueless as to what an mbr is! So basically you see a screen that says, "if in doubt select all", and you do so. Now, I'm aware those are not the exact words but I've been following (and trying to help folks fix) these problems since Lucid was released. It's particularly troublesome when someone installs grub2 to an NTFS partition with a Win OS so I'd at least suggest making grub installation to an NTFS (or any FAT) partition very difficult. Honestly I'm not sure what the solution should be, but I know Colin Watson deals with a lot of these grub2 issues and I've come to trust his judgment. Consider the following options: #1: Display nothing but drives, that is "sda", "sdb", etc, and NO individual partitions. But create another "advanced" tab/option to allow installation to a partition. #2: Increase the amount of text explaining the difference between drives and partitions, why it's a bad idea to install to a partition etc. IMHO that's a horrible option. (The more text the less likely a new user is to read it.) #3: Figure out a way to always have grub(2) install itself where it was to begin with. (maybe a bad idea if the original install was wrong.) While I think option #1 is great I have no idea how complicated that would be. Does any of that make sense? I'd be glad to test any potential "fixes" :^) SRU justification: IMPACT: I concur with the problems described above. We often see people turning up in #grub who've been affected by this, and it's often the least capable users who are suddenly hit by an unbootable Windows system which can be quite a challenge to fix. We need to clear this up in a stable update to limit the damage. DEVELOPMENT BRANCH: While I haven't uploaded this yet due to the Alpha-2 freeze, I've committed it to the Maverick branch for grub2 1.98+20100614-2ubuntu4: http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-core-dev/ubuntu/maverick/grub2/maverick/revision/1999 PATCH: http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-core-dev/ubuntu/lucid/grub2/lucid/revision/1973 (plus debconf-updatepo). TEST CASE: The simplest way to force this confusing screen to appear is by running 'sudo dpkg-reconfigure grub-pc'. The broken state is that all partitions are offered, including Windows partitions which will be broken by installing GRUB to them; the desired state is described in comment 56. REGRESSION POTENTIAL: I can hardly have made the dialog any more harmfully misleading, but if I got my change badly enough wrong then upgrades might break (along with dpkg-reconfigure). I think it would be worth testing an upgrade from Karmic on a two-disk system and making sure that the experience is vaguely reasonable.
2010-06-30 13:38:15 Colin Watson description Binary package hint: grub-pc This is a horrible way to file a bug report and I'm aware of that, but this needs to be considered. Throughout various upgrade and/or update procedures in Ubuntu and its variants the user gets a display asking where to install grub(2). There is a suggestion that if in doubt to install to the mbr of all drives. Unfortunately most new (and some old) users have no idea how drives/partitions are designated in Ubuntu, and they're clueless as to what an mbr is! So basically you see a screen that says, "if in doubt select all", and you do so. Now, I'm aware those are not the exact words but I've been following (and trying to help folks fix) these problems since Lucid was released. It's particularly troublesome when someone installs grub2 to an NTFS partition with a Win OS so I'd at least suggest making grub installation to an NTFS (or any FAT) partition very difficult. Honestly I'm not sure what the solution should be, but I know Colin Watson deals with a lot of these grub2 issues and I've come to trust his judgment. Consider the following options: #1: Display nothing but drives, that is "sda", "sdb", etc, and NO individual partitions. But create another "advanced" tab/option to allow installation to a partition. #2: Increase the amount of text explaining the difference between drives and partitions, why it's a bad idea to install to a partition etc. IMHO that's a horrible option. (The more text the less likely a new user is to read it.) #3: Figure out a way to always have grub(2) install itself where it was to begin with. (maybe a bad idea if the original install was wrong.) While I think option #1 is great I have no idea how complicated that would be. Does any of that make sense? I'd be glad to test any potential "fixes" :^) SRU justification: IMPACT: I concur with the problems described above. We often see people turning up in #grub who've been affected by this, and it's often the least capable users who are suddenly hit by an unbootable Windows system which can be quite a challenge to fix. We need to clear this up in a stable update to limit the damage. DEVELOPMENT BRANCH: While I haven't uploaded this yet due to the Alpha-2 freeze, I've committed it to the Maverick branch for grub2 1.98+20100614-2ubuntu4: http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-core-dev/ubuntu/maverick/grub2/maverick/revision/1999 PATCH: http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-core-dev/ubuntu/lucid/grub2/lucid/revision/1973 (plus debconf-updatepo). TEST CASE: The simplest way to force this confusing screen to appear is by running 'sudo dpkg-reconfigure grub-pc'. The broken state is that all partitions are offered, including Windows partitions which will be broken by installing GRUB to them; the desired state is described in comment 56. REGRESSION POTENTIAL: I can hardly have made the dialog any more harmfully misleading, but if I got my change badly enough wrong then upgrades might break (along with dpkg-reconfigure). I think it would be worth testing an upgrade from Karmic on a two-disk system and making sure that the experience is vaguely reasonable. Binary package hint: grub-pc This is a horrible way to file a bug report and I'm aware of that, but this needs to be considered. Throughout various upgrade and/or update procedures in Ubuntu and its variants the user gets a display asking where to install grub(2). There is a suggestion that if in doubt to install to the mbr of all drives. Unfortunately most new (and some old) users have no idea how drives/partitions are designated in Ubuntu, and they're clueless as to what an mbr is! So basically you see a screen that says, "if in doubt select all", and you do so. Now, I'm aware those are not the exact words but I've been following (and trying to help folks fix) these problems since Lucid was released. It's particularly troublesome when someone installs grub2 to an NTFS partition with a Win OS so I'd at least suggest making grub installation to an NTFS (or any FAT) partition very difficult. Honestly I'm not sure what the solution should be, but I know Colin Watson deals with a lot of these grub2 issues and I've come to trust his judgment. Consider the following options: #1: Display nothing but drives, that is "sda", "sdb", etc, and NO individual partitions. But create another "advanced" tab/option to allow installation to a partition. #2: Increase the amount of text explaining the difference between drives and partitions, why it's a bad idea to install to a partition etc. IMHO that's a horrible option. (The more text the less likely a new user is to read it.) #3: Figure out a way to always have grub(2) install itself where it was to begin with. (maybe a bad idea if the original install was wrong.) While I think option #1 is great I have no idea how complicated that would be. Does any of that make sense? I'd be glad to test any potential "fixes" :^) SRU justification: IMPACT: I concur with the problems described above. We often see people turning up in #grub who've been affected by this, and it's often the least capable users who are suddenly hit by an unbootable Windows system which can be quite a challenge to fix. We need to clear this up in a stable update to limit the damage. DEVELOPMENT BRANCH: While I haven't uploaded this yet due to the Alpha-2 freeze, I've committed it to the Maverick branch for grub2 1.98+20100614-2ubuntu4: http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-core-dev/ubuntu/maverick/grub2/maverick/revision/1999 PATCH: http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-core-dev/ubuntu/lucid/grub2/lucid/revision/1973 TEST CASE: The simplest way to force this confusing screen to appear is by running 'sudo dpkg-reconfigure grub-pc'. The broken state is that all partitions are offered, including Windows partitions which will be broken by installing GRUB to them; the desired state is described in comment 56. REGRESSION POTENTIAL: I can hardly have made the dialog any more harmfully misleading, but if I got my change badly enough wrong then upgrades might break (along with dpkg-reconfigure). I think it would be worth testing an upgrade from Karmic on a two-disk system and making sure that the experience is vaguely reasonable. You may be able to save time by testing this together with bug 580408.
2010-07-01 17:50:19 Launchpad Janitor grub2 (Ubuntu Maverick): status Fix Committed Fix Released
2010-07-01 18:16:16 Launchpad Janitor branch linked lp:ubuntu/grub2
2010-07-01 20:18:20 Martin Pitt grub2 (Ubuntu Lucid): status In Progress Fix Committed
2010-07-01 20:18:24 Martin Pitt bug added subscriber Ubuntu Stable Release Updates Team
2010-07-01 20:18:27 Martin Pitt bug added subscriber SRU Verification
2010-07-01 20:18:32 Martin Pitt tags verification-needed
2010-07-01 21:16:17 Launchpad Janitor branch linked lp:ubuntu/lucid-proposed/grub2
2010-07-08 11:09:28 Colin Watson tags verification-needed verification-done
2010-07-22 09:32:38 Launchpad Janitor grub2 (Ubuntu Lucid): status Fix Committed Fix Released
2010-07-25 19:51:54 Erick Brunzell attachment added RESULTS2.txt.tar.gz http://launchpadlibrarian.net/52500127/RESULTS2.txt.tar.gz
2010-07-27 15:11:36 Nicolò Chieffo removed subscriber Nicolò Chieffo
2010-08-03 23:59:01 Erick Brunzell bug added subscriber Alex Cockell
2010-08-05 11:25:23 Takkat removed subscriber Takkat
2011-09-19 21:18:58 Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot tags verification-done testcase verification-done
2011-09-21 22:04:57 arpanaut removed subscriber arpanaut