Grub2 Corrupts Hard Drive and Bad Design Causing failed boot.
Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
grub2 (Ubuntu) |
Won't Fix
|
Undecided
|
Unassigned |
Bug Description
It's bad enough that the designers of various linux distros decided the default place for GRUB was the MBR instead of adhering to standard PC architecture practices (which all other OSes, including *nix version, followed), of putting the kernel loaders in the partition and making it active so standard code in the MBR would transfer control to it. For cases where a volume was to boot it could have made the Extended partition active, put the start code in the EBR of the extended and have that boot the volume. The Linux community would have a fit if MS decided it was going to write its own kernel loaders and stick them in the MBR and take over the disk.
Anyway, now apparently whoever has taken over GRUB2 (latest version) has made some big mistakes and must not understand the standard pc architecture either. Someone has made it write outside the first track of the hard drive if it doesn't think there is a partition there.
1 - Writing outside the first track of the hard drive can corrupt partitions not in the MBR at the time which is common with various partitioning schemes and cause data loss for users.
2 - Adding a partition to the start of the disk (cylinder aligned) afterwards would overwrite the part of GRUB written out beyond the first track making the entire system unbootable.
3 - changing partition layouts can again overwrite GRUB data which should be in the partition by default.
Looks like you beat me to the punch David! Here we go again!! Already went though all this crap with Lucid and NOW IT'S BACK!!
Performed an upgrade from 10 LTS to 12 LTS. Upgrade went perfectly. Rebooted the computer... nothing!! DEAD! Boot sector GONE!!