Hitting XFS/grub bug in FAI (with work-around)

[Carsten Aulbert]

Hi,

maybe this is already common knowledge, but I've just hit this with our
experimental FAI buster server with / (and /boot) on XFS:

GRUB-PC/10-setup resulted in an error with grub-probe or grub-install
returning error code 1 and the message "unknown filesystem".

The solution seems to be a recent change of default options for
mkfs.xfs, namely the "sparse" feature:

https://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/10401911/

The work-around until a new fixed grub version will land in buster seems
to be to add

createopts="-i sparse=0"

into your disk_config file.

@Thomas, is this something which should be reported to the grub team,
either directly or via bugs.debian.org?

All testing has been done in "BIOS" mode not with EFI, i.e. this may be
a no-issue for people using EFI.

Cheers

Carsten

-- 
Dr. Carsten Aulbert, Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics,
Callinstraße 38, 30167 Hannover, Germany
Phone: +49 511 762 17185