[gentoo-dev] News item: GRUB2 migration

[gentoo-dev] News item: GRUB2 migration

[Mike Gilbert]

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GRUB2 will be stabilized soon (bug 455544). Here's a draft of a news
item to hopefully prevent any confusion. Please review.

------------

Title: GRUB2 migration
Author: Mike Gilbert <floppym@gentoo.org>
Content-Type: text/plain
Posted: 2013-09-22
Revision: 1
News-Item-Format: 1.0
Display-If-Installed: <sys-boot/grub-1

A newer version of GRUB (sys-boot/grub) is now stable. There are now
two available slots:

sys-boot/grub:0 - Known as "GRUB Legacy"
sys-boot/grub:2 - Known as "GRUB2"

GRUB2 uses a different configuration format, and requires a manual
migration before your system will actually use it. A guide [1] is
available on the gentoo.org website.

If you would prefer not to migrate at this time, you do not need to
take any action: GRUB Legacy will remain functional in /boot. To
prevent any associated files (documentation) from being removed, add
sys-boot/grub:0 to your world file. For example:

emerge --noreplace sys-boot/grub:0

References:

[1] http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/grub2-migration.xml


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Re: [gentoo-dev] News item: GRUB2 migration

["Paweł Hajdan, Jr."]

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On 9/21/13 8:42 AM, Mike Gilbert wrote:
> GRUB2 will be stabilized soon (bug 455544). Here's a draft of a news
> item to hopefully prevent any confusion. Please review.

Great news! Thanks for working on this, and it basically works
(chainloaded for now, see below) on my x86 system.

Some general remarks:

1. When using chainloaded GRUB2, neither Linux kernel boot messages nor
openrc boot messages would show up. Also, at shutdown openrc shutdown
messages were also not visible. Everything is fine if I boot the kernel
using GRUB legacy. This is inside VMWare Fusion.

2. At least /etc/default/grub refers to /boot/grub2, as opposed to
/boot/grub from Gentoo docs.

> GRUB2 uses a different configuration format, and requires a manual
> migration before your system will actually use it. A guide [1] is
> available on the gentoo.org website.
> 
> [...]
> 
> [1] http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/grub2-migration.xml

The grub postinst message links to
<http://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/GRUB2_Quick_Start> instead - and that wiki
page has a link to <http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/grub2-migration.xml> .

IMHO it would be elegant for the news item to match the postinst
message: either make the grub2-migration.xml point to wiki as possibly
containing more information (and switch grub postint to point to
grub2-migration.xml), or make both link to the wiki.

Paweł



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Re: [gentoo-dev] News item: GRUB2 migration

[Mike Gilbert]

On Sat, Sep 21, 2013 at 2:07 PM, "Paweł Hajdan, Jr."
<phajdan.jr@gentoo.org> wrote:
> On 9/21/13 8:42 AM, Mike Gilbert wrote:
>> GRUB2 will be stabilized soon (bug 455544). Here's a draft of a news
>> item to hopefully prevent any confusion. Please review.
>
> Great news! Thanks for working on this, and it basically works
> (chainloaded for now, see below) on my x86 system.
>
> Some general remarks:
>
> 1. When using chainloaded GRUB2, neither Linux kernel boot messages nor
> openrc boot messages would show up. Also, at shutdown openrc shutdown
> messages were also not visible. Everything is fine if I boot the kernel
> using GRUB legacy. This is inside VMWare Fusion.
>

Hmm... I don't really have a clue here. I will try to reproduce it in qemu.

> 2. At least /etc/default/grub refers to /boot/grub2, as opposed to
> /boot/grub from Gentoo docs.
>

Thanks for catching that; fixed in the tree.

>> GRUB2 uses a different configuration format, and requires a manual
>> migration before your system will actually use it. A guide [1] is
>> available on the gentoo.org website.
>>
>> [...]
>>
>> [1] http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/grub2-migration.xml
>
> The grub postinst message links to
> <http://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/GRUB2_Quick_Start> instead - and that wiki
> page has a link to <http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/grub2-migration.xml> .
>
> IMHO it would be elegant for the news item to match the postinst
> message: either make the grub2-migration.xml point to wiki as possibly
> containing more information (and switch grub postint to point to
> grub2-migration.xml), or make both link to the wiki.
>

How about linking to both pages from the news item?

For the postinst message, I could link to the migration guide if
sys-boot/grub:0 is installed. If grub:0 is not installed, there should
be no need to "migrate".

Re: [gentoo-dev] News item: GRUB2 migration

[Michael Orlitzky]

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Hash: SHA1

On 09/21/2013 11:42 AM, Mike Gilbert wrote:
> GRUB2 will be stabilized soon (bug 455544). Here's a draft of a
> news item to hopefully prevent any confusion. Please review.

The "FAQ / Known Problems / Gotchas" section of the guide is still
empty. Maybe fill this in before pushing this stable?

My contribution:

About half of our servers failed at the install phase with the error
(copy/pasted from Google, might not be exact),

  /usr/sbin/grub2-install: warn: Your embedding area is unusually
  small. core.img won't fit in it.

  /usr/sbin/grub2-install: warn: Embedding is not possible. GRUB can
  only be installed in this setup by using blocklists. However,
  blocklists are UNRELIABLE and their use is discouraged.

  /usr/sbin/grub2-install: error: will not proceed with blocklists.

To paraphrase, "there ain't enough space before your first partition."

Generally this means that you are screwed, and that you'll need to
boot something like the gparted liveCD and resize all of your
partitions. It would be nice to list some options on the page.

If the user is lucky (thankfully, I was), his swap partition is the
first partition on the disk. In that case, he can simply `swapoff` the
thing, mangle it with fdisk, and then `mkswap foo` && `swapon foo`.

The fdisk commands were,

  1. 'x' - extra functionality (experts only)

  2. 'b' - move beginning of data in a partition

  3. '1' - Choose the first partition

  4. '4096' - New beginning of data (1-8000369, default 63)

Something smaller might work, but 4096 definitely does. Better play it
safe in case grub3 wants to play HD video.

For what it's worth, the following wiki pages both provided useful
information (at the time, the g.o page didn't exist):

  * https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/GRUB2_Quick_Start

  * https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/GRUB2


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Re: [gentoo-dev] News item: GRUB2 migration

[Mike Gilbert]

On Sat, Sep 21, 2013 at 2:22 PM, Michael Orlitzky <michael@orlitzky.com> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> On 09/21/2013 11:42 AM, Mike Gilbert wrote:
>> GRUB2 will be stabilized soon (bug 455544). Here's a draft of a
>> news item to hopefully prevent any confusion. Please review.
>
> The "FAQ / Known Problems / Gotchas" section of the guide is still
> empty. Maybe fill this in before pushing this stable?
>

It would probably be better to just link to the GRUB2 article on the
wiki. If you could update that with any relevant information, that
would be great.

Re: [gentoo-dev] News item: GRUB2 migration

[Mike Gilbert]

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On 09/21/2013 02:18 PM, Mike Gilbert wrote:
> On Sat, Sep 21, 2013 at 2:07 PM, "Paweł Hajdan, Jr."
>> The grub postinst message links to
>> <http://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/GRUB2_Quick_Start> instead - and that wiki
>> page has a link to <http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/grub2-migration.xml> .
>>
>> IMHO it would be elegant for the news item to match the postinst
>> message: either make the grub2-migration.xml point to wiki as possibly
>> containing more information (and switch grub postint to point to
>> grub2-migration.xml), or make both link to the wiki.
>>
> 
> How about linking to both pages from the news item?
> 

Here's a second draft including that change.

--------

Title: GRUB2 stabilization
Author: Mike Gilbert <floppym@gentoo.org>
Content-Type: text/plain
Posted: 2013-09-22
Revision: 1
News-Item-Format: 1.0
Display-If-Installed: <sys-boot/grub-1

A newer version of GRUB (sys-boot/grub) is now stable. There are now
two available slots:

sys-boot/grub:0 - Known as "GRUB Legacy"
sys-boot/grub:2 - Known as "GRUB2"

GRUB2 uses a different configuration format, and requires a manual
migration before your system will actually use it. A guide [1] is
available on the gentoo.org website, and the Gentoo wiki [2][3] has
additional information.

If you would prefer not to migrate at this time, you do not need to
take any action: GRUB Legacy will remain functional in /boot. To
prevent any associated files (documentation) from being removed, add
sys-boot/grub:0 to your world file. For example:

emerge --noreplace sys-boot/grub:0

References:

[1] http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/grub2-migration.xml
[2] https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/GRUB2_Quick_Start
[3] https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/GRUB2


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Re: [gentoo-dev] News item: GRUB2 migration

[Mike Gilbert]

On Sat, Sep 21, 2013 at 2:18 PM, Mike Gilbert <floppym@gentoo.org> wrote:
> On Sat, Sep 21, 2013 at 2:07 PM, "Paweł Hajdan, Jr."
> <phajdan.jr@gentoo.org> wrote:
>> On 9/21/13 8:42 AM, Mike Gilbert wrote:
>>> GRUB2 will be stabilized soon (bug 455544). Here's a draft of a news
>>> item to hopefully prevent any confusion. Please review.
>>
>> Great news! Thanks for working on this, and it basically works
>> (chainloaded for now, see below) on my x86 system.
>>
>> Some general remarks:
>>
>> 1. When using chainloaded GRUB2, neither Linux kernel boot messages nor
>> openrc boot messages would show up. Also, at shutdown openrc shutdown
>> messages were also not visible. Everything is fine if I boot the kernel
>> using GRUB legacy. This is inside VMWare Fusion.
>>
>
> Hmm... I don't really have a clue here. I will try to reproduce it in qemu.
>

I wasn't able to reproduce this in qemu. It is possible that GRUB's
graphical terminal driver has some issues with VMWare.

However, have a Gentoo box at work that runs GRUB2 on VMWare ESX, and
I don't recall having any display issues on the console. But I'm also
not chainloading it there.

Re: [gentoo-dev] News item: GRUB2 migration

["Paweł Hajdan, Jr."]

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On 9/21/13 1:19 PM, Mike Gilbert wrote:
> I wasn't able to reproduce this in qemu. It is possible that GRUB's
> graphical terminal driver has some issues with VMWare.
> 
> However, have a Gentoo box at work that runs GRUB2 on VMWare ESX, and
> I don't recall having any display issues on the console. But I'm also
> not chainloading it there.

Thanks for testing this. I've tried without chainloading and it was also
broken.

However, I got it to work later, and there are at least two solutions:

1. In /etc/default/grub, uncomment GRUB_TERMINAL=console line and re-run
grub2-mkconfig.

2. In /etc/default/grub, add GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX=text line and re-run
grub2-mkconfig.

Actually Arch wiki article mentions something very similar:
<https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GRUB2#Disable_framebuffer>

Also, it seems worth it to add to the guide info about how to roll back
just in case. Running grub-install /dev/sda works just fine (it invokes
grub legacy as opposed to grub2).

Then, looking at Arch wiki article, it's probably a good idea to make
backup:
<https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GRUB2#Backup_important_data> . I
recommend adding this to our guide.

Paweł


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