update-grub produces a grub.cfg that won't boot

[Michael Lustfield]

Binary package hint: grub

When running update-grub from a normal running environment a grub.cfg is produced that will not boot the system. However, when it's unable to boot I can use systemrescuecd to mount /, /dev/, and /proc/, and chroot into it to run update-grub. When doing this I'm able to reboot into a working system.

Here is a diff between the two grub.cfg files produced...

root@panther:/home/michael/boot# diff bad/grub/grub.cfg good/grub/grub.cfg
97c97
< linux /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.36 root=/dev/root ro vt.handoff=7
---
> linux /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.36 root=/dev/sda1 ro vt.handoff=7
107c107
< linux /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.36 root=/dev/root ro single
---
> linux /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.36 root=/dev/sda1 ro single

So the only issue is that root=/dev/root is being produced rather than root=/dev/sda1.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

Thanks for your report. I'm fairly sure that this has the same underlying cause as bug 700147.