[Bug 26031] Re: grub menu contains "combinatorial expansion" of existing installations
I worked around this in os-prober recently. (Chaining to the other installations rather than copying their boot menu items, as Ian suggests, would still ultimately be better, but is more work to arrange.) os-prober (1.20) unstable; urgency=low * Skip grub-installer's "(on /dev/blah)" entries detected in GRUB configuration files, as if they're useful they will probably be found by another probe, and detecting them can result in exponential growth of menu.lst files if you do repeated test installs on multiple partitions. * Use readlink -f in mapdevfs shim so that os-prober runs outside d-i handle mount-by-UUID correctly. * Use mktemp -d rather than /tmp, to make use outside d-i safer. * Merge from Ubuntu: - Try to install fs-core-modules and fs-secondary-modules udebs. These are specific to the Ubuntu kernel udeb layout, but it's fairly cheap to check for them as well and saves on divergence here. - Add os-probes/mounted/sparc/80solaris to recognize Solaris/SPARC (Fabio M. Di Nitto). - Add linux-boot-probes/mounted/sparc/50silo support (Fabio M. Di Nitto). - Try to load ufs module, for Solaris support (Fabio M. Di Nitto). - Tighten check for whether we're running in d-i; anna-install isn't quite enough because if you're running d-i code outside d-i it's sometimes reasonable to install a shim for anna-install. * Don't probe partitions mounted on /target/boot. * Teach linux-boot-prober to deal with mounted partitions correctly, unless they're mounted on /, /target, or /target/boot (LP: #14780). This should largely obsolete the --mounted option. * Only use /target/bin/mount if it exists, in order to work better outside d-i. -- Colin Watson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Thu, 26 Jul 2007 12:33:31 +0100 ** Changed in: os-prober (Ubuntu) Sourcepackagename: grub-installer => os-prober Assignee: (unassigned) => Colin Watson Status: Confirmed => Fix Released -- grub menu contains "combinatorial expansion" of existing installations https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/26031 You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is a direct subscriber. -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
[Bug 26031] Re: grub menu contains "combinatorial expansion" of existing installations
** Changed in: grub-installer (Ubuntu) Assignee: Colin Watson => (unassigned) -- grub menu contains "combinatorial expansion" of existing installations https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/26031 You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is a direct subscriber. -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
[Bug 26031] Re: grub menu contains "combinatorial expansion" of existing installations
No problem, Colin! I just thought it was a bit embarrassing for Ubuntu, really. -- grub menu contains "combinatorial expansion" of existing installations https://launchpad.net/bugs/26031 -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
[Bug 26031] Re: grub menu contains "combinatorial expansion" of existing installations
Paul, we certainly do test this. I'm sorry you got bothered earlier with the question of whether this bug still existed in Dapper; I was certainly aware that it still existed and there was no need to ask you again about it. The reason I haven't considered it a high priority to fix is that it really only badly affects users who do lots and lots of consecutive installations in different partitions on the same machine; that's not to say I don't consider it a bug, just that I have many more urgent things to do. I will try to get to it at some point. -- grub menu contains "combinatorial expansion" of existing installations https://launchpad.net/bugs/26031 -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
[Bug 26031] Re: grub menu contains "combinatorial expansion" of existing installations
Well, as for the importance of this bug, I suppose that people "expert" enough to want to have multiple installations probably should know how to edit grub menus, but I'm a bit disappointed that there have been two releases since Hoary without fixes for this. Had I had time, I would have attempted a Dapper install by now and would have seen this again, but surely this kind of testing shouldn't fall upon random end-users to test, especially since a review of the code would probably have revealed the cause. The big question is and was this: have we (or do we) test our installs alongside existing ones? If the answer is no, the testing process should be improved, because it's a pretty big omission, really. -- grub menu contains "combinatorial expansion" of existing installations https://launchpad.net/bugs/26031 -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
[Bug 26031] Re: [Bug 26031] Re: grub menu contains "combinatorial expansion" of existing installations
Colin Watson writes ("[Bug 26031] Re: grub menu contains "combinatorial
expansion" of existing installations"):
> No, this bug isn't in update-grub, it's in the installer component that
> generates the initial menu.lst. update-grub only looks at kernels in its
> own installation.
>
> Note that all the "(on /dev/blah)" entries are outside the "AUTOMAGIC
> KERNELS LIST" section, so update-grub considers them to be manually-
> maintained.
So they are.
If we hadn't been in the habit of installing grub in the mbr then this
would be a much easier problem to solve: we could chain to the grub in
the other partition.
Ian.
--
grub menu contains "combinatorial expansion" of existing installations
https://launchpad.net/bugs/26031
--
ubuntu-bugs mailing list
ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
[Bug 26031] Re: grub menu contains "combinatorial expansion" of existing installations
No, this bug isn't in update-grub, it's in the installer component that generates the initial menu.lst. update-grub only looks at kernels in its own installation. Note that all the "(on /dev/blah)" entries are outside the "AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST" section, so update-grub considers them to be manually- maintained. -- grub menu contains "combinatorial expansion" of existing installations https://launchpad.net/bugs/26031 -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
[Bug 26031] Re: [Bug 26031] Re: grub menu contains "combinatorial expansion" of existing installations
Come to think of it, can this bug cause existing installations to become unbootable after a while ? Consider a machine with only two installs, each of which runs update-grub occasionally. Each time update-grub is run in install A, A's menu.list is made to be twice the size of B's, and vice versa. So after running update-grub five times in each install, in alternation, the menu.list will have O(1000) entries (x the original three or so). We don't know when bug 54041 triggers. Perhaps this bug should be `High' ? Ian. -- grub menu contains "combinatorial expansion" of existing installations https://launchpad.net/bugs/26031 -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
[Bug 26031] Re: grub menu contains "combinatorial expansion" of existing installations
** Changed in: grub-installer (Ubuntu) Status: Needs Info => Confirmed -- grub menu contains "combinatorial expansion" of existing installations https://launchpad.net/bugs/26031 -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
