Comment 60 for bug 576724

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Erick Brunzell (lbsolost) wrote :

@ Colin Watson,

This looks good to me. Just so you know, I'm not intentionally ignoring this, I'm simply buried in nightmarish completely unrelated "non-computer" issues (remodeling) :^/

But I should have time to do the SRU testing for this and #580408 very soon (hopefully within 48 hours). Although I'm just a little unclear what exactly to do, sorry :^(

To recap, in this thread you say, "The simplest way to force this confusing screen to appear is by running 'sudo dpkg-reconfigure grub-pc'. The broken state is that all partitions are offered, including Windows partitions which will be broken by installing GRUB to them; the desired state is described in comment 56."

I do understand the command, but is it or is it not necessary to apply any patch first? If yes I'm a bit unclear how to apply the patch. I'm thinking it's applied on the Ubuntu server end but I'm just not sure.

Over at #580408 you say, "Install Karmic on a two-disk system, run 'echo SET grub-pc/install_devices /dev/sda | sudo debconf-communicate' to arrange for initial conditions that trigger this bug, then upgrade to Lucid. The first time round the loop, uncheck all the boxes, and then answer "No" to "Continue without installing GRUB"; it should ask you the same question with a list of checkboxes again, and should have left all of them unchecked. Also try an upgrade from Lucid as released to this update on the same system, running 'echo SET grub-pc/install_devices /dev/hda | sudo debconf-communicate' before starting the upgrade; this should give you a dialog reading "The GRUB boot loader was previously installed to a disk that is no longer present ...", and again if you uncheck all the boxes you should get consistent behaviour the second time round the loop. You may be able to save time by testing this together with bug 576724."

Now my head's kind of spinning ;^)

I do understand the commands, and I have no problem with using a two disk system, but would you prefer I use a two disk system with Windows on one disk? Maybe with a Win MBR on one disc and a grub 2 MBR on the other? Or does that even matter?

And once again, do I need to manually apply any patch first?

And regarding that latter command, "'echo SET grub-pc/install_devices /dev/hda | sudo debconf-communicate', should the "/dev/hda" not be "/dev/sda" for Ubuntu? Sorry to be a pain, I just want to be sure.

The system I'm using now is described in that RESULTS4.txt.tar.gz in post #52 but I have another in the closet that has Win XP on one drive and I can easily hook it up, I've just been waiting until this nightmarish remodel is over but I don't mind spending a little time to help you. After all, you're helping us a lot!

Basically I'm just an end user with very limited technical skills and I want to be certain to test these two bugs fixes in the manner that will be most useful to you, so if you have the time in the next couple of days I'd appreciate a simplified "dummies guide" to testing these for SRU.

I do have one more "dumb" question. I've generally avoided using a separate "/boot" partition unless absolutely necessary to deal with BIOS partition size limits so I know little about such layouts. So this from your #grub conversation:

"<cjwatson> Jordan_U: I thought about an Advanced option, but since I can't think of a good reason for people to install other than to the partition containing /boot (actually /boot/grub), there doesn't seem a need for it"

sort of raised an eyebrow because I remember with legacy grub how I had to drop the "/boot" from "find /boot/grub/stage1" while using a grub shell to reinstall legacy grub if a separate "/boot" existed. But I'm sure you took that into consideration. Just thought I might as well display my ignorance :^)

Above all else please accept my thanks for taking care of this and also my apologies for being somewhat pushy.