reinstall grub option makes other installs unbootable

[Ian Jackson]

I did the following using the feisty i386 d-i cd rc 20070415:
 * Install using "erase whole disk" (in English)
 * Install using "auto resize" (in Dutch)
 * Boot with the rescue CD. Ask for rescue mode; select sda1 (the English install); ask to reinstall grub on (hd0)
After this, the Dutch install is not bootable because the English install's grub menu predates the Dutch one.

It is difficult to see how this could be improved given the current (IMO broken) design. Note that a user who is trying to fix an older install with a rescue disk may choose the route above and then find that it is not possible to chroot from the older install to the newer due to kernel incompatibilities; they must then run the rescue again, counterintuitively asking to reinstall the boot loader for the new install.

This would all be much easier if we installed grub in the root of our partition and just put some chain loader in the mbr.

[compustretch (compustretch)]

Quote:
  " I did the following using the feisty i386 d-i cd rc 20070415:
      * Boot with the rescue CD. "

Which rescue CD is that?
Feisty Fawn 7.04 is a single disk live installation that is not a rescue CD, and will explicity say so if you pass it 'rescue' as an argument.

And yes, the design is broken in the way you described.

[xteejx (xteejx-deactivatedaccount)]

Thank you for reporting this bug to Ubuntu. Feisty reached EOL in October 2008.
Please see this document for currently supported Ubuntu releases:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases

Please feel free to report any other bugs you may find.

[Ian Jackson (ijackson)]

There is no reason to think that this bug does not exist in current Ubuntu releases. As I understand it the design has not changed, and the problem is caused by the design.

[xteejx (xteejx-deactivatedaccount)]

Hi. It seems no-one looked at this report despite the Confirmed status. Can you confirm if this is an issue in 10.10 as I am unable to test this (no testing machines/ability at the moment). Thank you.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

Please do not set this bug to Incomplete again. No further information is required from the reporter.