os-prober fails to identify bootable MS-DOS partition

[Linards Ticmanis]

Binary package hint: os-prober

Karmic development branch (9.10), freshly updated as of Fri Oct 16 22:00 UTC.

os-prober package version is 1.35

os-prober did not detect my MS-DOS partition during the grub to grub2 update process. This is caused by a bug in a script.

The following in /usr/lib/os-probes/mounted/20microsoft is wrong:

elif [ -d "$(item_in_dir dos $2)" ]; then
        long="MS-DOS 5.x/6.x/Win3.1"
        short=MS-DOS"

This can't work as the process is not in the right working directory for the -d test to succeed (except by accident when there is another directory of that name in the working directory).

The following line fixes the bug:

elif item_in_dir -q dos "$2" && [ -d "$2/$(item_in_dir dos $2)" ]; then
        long="MS-DOS 5.x/6.x/Win3.1"
        short=MS-DOS"

Note that we can't have just the second test since otherwise it will always succeed. Reason: "$(item...)" is then the empty string, so it just tests for the existence of the mount point "$2".

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
Date: Sat Oct 17 00:51:40 2009
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: os-prober 1.35
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_US.UTF-8
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-14.48-generic
SourcePackage: os-prober
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-14-generic x86_64
XsessionErrors:
 (gnome-settings-daemon:2217): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_propagate_error: assertion `src != NULL' failed
 (polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1:2329): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_once_init_leave: assertion `initialization_value != 0' failed
 (nautilus:2310): Eel-CRITICAL **: eel_preferences_get_boolean: assertion `preferences_is_initialized ()' failed
 (gnome-panel:2306): Gdk-WARNING **: /build/buildd/gtk+2.0-2.18.2/gdk/x11/gdkdrawable-x11.c:952 drawable is not a pixmap or window

[cooper yuan (cooperyuan)]

seems this bug still exists in os-prober 1.37.

[Robert D. (robert-j-dixon)]

Thanks Linards for documenting this bug and providing a solution.
I've just found it in Ubuntu 10.10 freshly updated, with os-prober 1.39.
Using MS-DOS 6.22.

I am not familiar with the process, what causes your corrections to be accepted into the original package (so we don't have to manually reapply every upgrade) ??

Regards,
Robert.