GRUB menu.lst incorrect when using a /boot partition

[risc at volumehost.com]

On Mon, Aug 15, 2005 at 09:32:07PM -0400, malk at sidehack.sat.gweep.net wrote:
> Hey Thomas-
> 
> I recently built an FAI server based on the 2.8.4, 25 May 2005 release
> and noticed when I partition with a boot parition, it seems FAI still
> builds the grub menu.lst w/ references to the root filesystem instead
> of the /boot filesystem.  i.e.  my partitioning looks like this:
> 
> # generic disk configuration for one small disk
> # disk size from 500Mb up to what you can buy today
> #
> # <type> <mountpoint> <size in mb> [mount options]     [;extra options]
> 
> disk_config disk2
> primary  /boot         100         rw,errors=remount-ro ; -j ext3
> primary  swap          2048        rw
> primary  /             10-         rw,errors=remount-ro ; -m 0 -j ext3
> 
> In my menu.lst, I end up with entries like this:
>    title    Debian ...
>    root     (hd1,2)
>    kernel   /vmlinuz-2.4.31-686 root=/dev/sdb3 ro
>    initrd   /initrd.img-2.4.31-686
> 
> When the "root" specification above should be:
> 
>    root     (hd1,0)
> 
> If I didn't have a /boot partition in my disk_config above, I'm guessing
> it would have made the menu.lst correctly.  I had to boot from floppy
> to fix the grub menu to end up w/ a working system.  No biggie, but 
> thought I should report this.
> 
> By the way -- the message "Congratulations, no errors found" at the 
> end of the FAI is nice to see -- this is the first FAI release I've 
> used where I haven't had to tweek anything to get all of the shell
> logs to show no "errors" even though the errors in my case were 
> beneign.  Nice job on a nice clean FAI release -- no "heartburn" messages
> to worry about when it runs so smooth like this.
> 
> --
> Eric Malkowski
> 
> > 
> > >>>>> On Mon, 15 Aug 2005 17:46:31 +0200, Henning Glawe <glaweh at physik.fu-berlin.de> said:
> >     > IMHO it would be good to nfs-mount the debmirror over tcp instead of udp,
> >     > because nfs over udp can be unreliable when gigabit ethernet is in use.
> > 
> > 
> >     > what are your opinions about setting this as FAI's default?
> > If more people are testing this and also like this as a default, then
> > I will accept it. I will not change such things when it only works in
> > one single environment.
> > 
> > -- 
> > regards Thomas
> > 

Hey malk,

two things of interest.
first, your /boot partition should not be ext3. if its caught in an unstable state, GRUB fails to read it.

second of all, i had success after changing the following line in /usr/local/share/fai/files/boot/grub/menu.lst:

GROOT=$(device2grub $BOOT_PARTITION)

that changes the specification, and installs properly.

for those concerned:

the perl line later in the script can be changed as such:
perl -pi -e 's/#(\w+)#/$ENV{$1}/g' $2 allows for a second #variable# to be expanded on one line, for example:
# kopt=#ROOT_PARTITION# ro #KBUGOPTS#

that gives my kernels an optional kernel option for working arround bad hardware. (eg noapic).

Julia Longtin <risc at volumehost.com>