Package: grub
Version: 0.95+cvs20040624
Severity: important
Reproducibly.
This is the story; and I posted it to grub mailing list quite some time ago:
If a splashimage is found, the auto-update will forcibly enter that
splashscreen into the part reserved for auto-updating.
Alas, grub is not able to handle any repetition here. That is, if the user had entered the same information of the same splashscreen further up in menu.lst,
grub will totally scramble the display.
This is a bug, because it breaks auto-update of kernels which by default
initiate a grub update.
It is a bad bug, even, because commenting the first splashscreen statement does
not help. grub does not respect the comment and reads the commented line as
uncommented.
And subsequently scrambles the display completely plus ignores the menu.
I could reproduce this bug on a plurality of machines and versions of grub.
Seemingly, there is no upstream solution.
It only hits those who define(d) their splashscreen on their own in menu.lst.
Here is a vulnerable menu.lst:
# menu.lst - See: grub(8), info grub, update-grub(8)
# grub-install(8), grub-floppy(8),
# grub-md5-crypt, /usr/share/doc/grub
# and /usr/share/doc/grub-doc/.
[...]
# Pretty colours
# color cyan/blue white/blue
# This should show a splash-screen
splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
## password ['--md5'] passwd
[...]
# Put static boot stanzas before and/or after AUTOMAGIC KERNEL LIST
### BEGIN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST
## lines between the AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST markers will be modified
## by the debian update-grub script except for the default options below
[...]
### END DEBIAN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST
After an auto-update (kernel patch in Sarge, e.g.) the display will be
scrambled and the grub menu be skipped.
Only solution: remove one of the occurrences of 'splashscreen' physically.
# splashscreen=........
won't help !
With an upstream solution missing (I am not even 100% sure that the auto-update
is upstream ?), the most feasible solution seems to not add / enter any
splashscreen found automatically.
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