QGrubEditor changes the UUID of /root partition if there's an external /boot partition

[integr8e]

Binary package hint: qgrubeditor

I have my system setup with 2 XFS partitions (/root and /home) and a separate ext3 /boot partition for GRUB. When editing my menu.lst file with QGrubEditor, it will change the root UUID of the partition to boot to that of the ext3 /boot partition, when I need it to be that of my XFS /root partition; thus, I receive an error at the GRUB menu when I try to boot Kubuntu. This is serious enough I'm sure it has been noticed elsewhere and is being fixed, but I'm reporting it just in case.

[Konstantinos Smanis (ksmanis)]

Does this happen in KGRUBEditor too? Could you please check this?

QGRUBEditor's development has been discontinued by the way.

[integr8e (integr8e)]

I've been really kinda' reluctant to mess with KGRUBEditor again; I played around with it when it first became available in the *buntu repos and believe I misconfigured one of the settings, not being familiar with the app. I rebooted my computer and found GRUB couldn't boot to my Kubuntu partition, so I popped in my Alternate CD and did what I've done several times: delete everything in my /boot/grub/* partition and reinstall GRUB. However, it couldn't seem to find either my /root or /home partitions...after some more investigation, I noticed nothing seemed to be able to read the partitions (the utilities I used either labeled their FS type as "unknown" or "linux", and couldn't read the information on them). Thus, I had to wipe everything and start over again (I lost about a weeks worth of data in my /home partition :P). It may have been just a coincidence, such as my partitions happened to become corrupted at the exact time I was using KGRUBEditor, but I've been manually configuring GRUB since then.

I'll give it another try, though, and let you know what I turn up.

[Konstantinos Smanis (ksmanis)]

Strange. I would say it was a coincidence because KGRUBEditor uses the same manner of reading and writing to GRUB's configuration files as QGRUBEditor.

However, you could have used the backup file. KGRUBEditor always creates one before accessing one file to avoid such occasions.

I am looking forward to your reply.

[integr8e (integr8e)]

Sorry for the delay, this past week has been full of ups and downs, and exams :P

KGRUBEditor doesn't seem to have the same issue as QGRUBEditor, as it provides many more configuration options including the partition to boot. I believe this one can be marked off your checklist (thanks for your help).

[Konstantinos Smanis (ksmanis)]

KGRUBEditor is not affected.
QGRUBEditor has ceased development.

[clovepower (mzattera)]

I confirm this bug is still there in Ubuntu 8.04.1 (qgrubeditor 2.5.0-0ubuntu1) and nuked my GRUB...only good thing I can say about this product is: please remove it from Ubuntu repositories if it's badly broken and discontinued!

[Luca Falavigna (dktrkranz)]

Why is this bug marked as invalid? Even if QGRUBEditor is no longer maintained upstream, it still affects users and it deserves to be analyzed and fixed somehow.

[Konstantinos Smanis (ksmanis)]

I am going to fix this, so where exactly does this malfunction occur? When editing an entry? More concrete examples would be nice.

[clovepower (mzattera)]

In my case, I simply changed the boot option name, but QGRUBEditor changed the Root from (hd2,0) to (hd0,0), this is show in the edit entry dialog but it's easily overlooked since you are not messing with that field.

Basically, it appears that when you edit a boot option, QGRUBEditor reset the Root to hd0,n instead of reading the field from the actual entry. So if you have the /boot partition on a different primary partition/HD it will break the boot process.

I'm sorry I cannot be more precise, but I re-organized my HD so I cannot duplicate it again and go step-by step.

If I'm to fix the bug, I'd double check that when the edit dialog comes up, it populates the fields using actual entries from menu.lst and does not use any other hard-coded default.

[Konstantinos Smanis (ksmanis)]

clovepower: Can you please check this tarball: http://www.4shared.com/file/64679772/deab3e08/QGRUBEditor-251-srctar.html

I think I fixed the bug but since I don't use an external /boot partition, I can't see if the bug is truly solved. Theoretically it should, though.

If possible, compile, run it, see if the bug occurs and let me know.

[clovepower (mzattera)]

Artemis: Thanks for the fix but I've since then changed my HD geometry and I cannot test the fix either :-(

[Konstantinos Smanis (ksmanis)]

OK. Never mind. I'll try to find someone else to test this.