http://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=597723 http://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=597723#c2 Thomas Fehr changed: What |Removed |Added ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- AssignedTo|fehr@novell.com |duwe@novell.com --- Comment #2 from Thomas Fehr 2010-04-19 12:01:10 UTC --- Seems grub is not able to cope with changed partition alignment new parted is using. Since this is nothing yast2-storage has any influence about and we definitely what the new alignment to better support disks with 4k sector size and flash drives I am reassigning this to grub maintainer for further investigation. -- Configure bugmail: http://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug.

http://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=597723 http://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=597723#c Thomas Fehr changed: What |Removed |Added ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- AssignedTo|fehr@novell.com |duwe@novell.com -- Configure bugmail: http://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug.

http://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=597723 http://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=597723#c5 --- Comment #5 from Thomas Fehr 2010-04-19 13:20:48 UTC --- I just did a test installation with a 220 Gig root partition on my machine and this also worked fine (modulo another problem which I will report separately). So in addition to root partition size there must be something else that triggers the problem. -- Configure bugmail: http://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug.

http://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=597723 http://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=597723#c8 Jozef Uhliarik changed: What |Removed |Added ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Status|NEEDINFO |NEW InfoProvider|juhliarik@novell.com | --- Comment #8 from Jozef Uhliarik 2010-04-19 14:17:28 UTC --- The following is parted output of my installation what doesn't boot on my /dev/sdb: # parted /dev/sdb unit cyl print unit s print Model: Unknown (unknown) Disk /dev/sdb: 36481cyl Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B BIOS cylinder,head,sector geometry: 36481,255,63. Each cylinder is 8225kB. Partition Table: msdos Number Start End Size Type File system Flags 1 0cyl 260cyl 260cyl primary linux-swap(v1) type=82 2 260cyl 36481cyl 36220cyl primary ext4 boot, type=83 Model: Unknown (unknown) Disk /dev/sdb: 586072368s Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B Partition Table: msdos Number Start End Size Type File system Flags 1 2048s 4192255s 4190208s primary linux-swap(v1) type=82 2 4192256s 586072063s 581879808s primary ext4 boot, type=83 -- Configure bugmail: http://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug.

http://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=597723 http://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=597723#c10 --- Comment #10 from Thomas Fehr 2010-04-19 14:28:56 UTC --- The only difference I see is the boot flag in partition 2 which is set on Jozef's disk and not set on my. Maybe booting via MBR works and booting from partition boot record fails. -- Configure bugmail: http://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug.

http://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=597723 http://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=597723#c12 --- Comment #12 from Thomas Fehr 2010-04-19 14:51:27 UTC --- We just tried removing boot flag in Uwe's machine and it did not make any difference. For what it is worth, grub says the following: ----------------------------------------------------------- Grub loading stage 1.5 Grub loading... ----------------------------------------------------------- And then hangs... -- Configure bugmail: http://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug.

http://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=597723 http://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=597723#c14 --- Comment #14 from Torsten Duwe 2010-04-19 15:11:50 UTC --- and while we're at it: did you force LBA where appropriate? -- Configure bugmail: http://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug.

http://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=597723 http://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=597723#c16 --- Comment #16 from Jozef Uhliarik 2010-04-19 15:35:54 UTC --- Created an attachment (id=355313) --> (http://bugzilla.novell.com/attachment.cgi?id=355313) YaST logs There is also y2log_bootloader where is output from GRUB -- Configure bugmail: http://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug.

http://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=597723 http://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=597723#c18 --- Comment #18 from Jozef Uhliarik 2010-04-19 15:37:26 UTC --- Created an attachment (id=355315) --> (http://bugzilla.novell.com/attachment.cgi?id=355315) menu.lst -- Configure bugmail: http://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug.

http://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=597723 http://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=597723#c20 Jozef Uhliarik changed: What |Removed |Added ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Status|NEEDINFO |NEW InfoProvider|juhliarik@novell.com | --- Comment #20 from Jozef Uhliarik 2010-04-19 15:41:55 UTC --- I hope that you have all relevant info now. -- Configure bugmail: http://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug.

http://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=597723 http://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=597723#c23 Jozef Uhliarik changed: What |Removed |Added ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Status|NEEDINFO |NEW InfoProvider|juhliarik@novell.com | --- Comment #23 from Jozef Uhliarik 2010-04-19 16:09:07 UTC --- Sorry I forgot it. grub.conf is too short: setup --stage2=/boot/grub/stage2 --force-lba (hd0) (hd0,1) quit -- Configure bugmail: http://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug.

http://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=597723 http://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=597723#c25 --- Comment #25 from Jozef Uhliarik 2010-04-19 16:16:50 UTC --- You should interested in /dev/sdb alias /dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3300831AS_3NF07E7L and /etc/firmware/edd/int13_dev80. -- Configure bugmail: http://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug.

http://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=597723 http://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=597723#c27 Jozef Uhliarik changed: What |Removed |Added ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Status|NEEDINFO |NEW InfoProvider|juhliarik@novell.com | --- Comment #27 from Jozef Uhliarik 2010-04-19 16:28:09 UTC --- I am not sure but Uwe has machine where is only one disk. I can "update" machine and use only one disk but it is time go home. I will let you know tomorrow. -- Configure bugmail: http://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug.

http://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=597723 http://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=597723#c29 --- Comment #29 from Uwe Gansert 2010-04-20 14:14:08 UTC --- I did some tests with a boot partition. I created: /dev/sda1 swap 1,5GB /dev/sda2 /boot 70MB /dev/sda3 / 140GB openSUSE 11.3 can boot that then I created: /dev/sda1 swap 1,5GB /dev/sda2 / 140GB /dev/sda3 /boot 70MB openSUSE 11.3 can not boot and grub is throwing an "Error 17". That's new because if I only create a huge "/" partition, I don't see "Error 17" but it can't boot either (see comment #17). SLES11 SP1 can boot both partitioning schemes on the same machine. -- Configure bugmail: http://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug.

http://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=597723 http://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=597723#c31 Uwe Gansert changed: What |Removed |Added ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Status|NEEDINFO |NEW InfoProvider|ug@novell.com | --- Comment #31 from Uwe Gansert 2010-04-21 08:46:23 UTC --- Created an attachment (id=355858) --> (http://bugzilla.novell.com/attachment.cgi?id=355858) logs logs attached. You can login to the machine too. It's in a 11.3 inst-sys and sda2 is mounted to /mnt -- Configure bugmail: http://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug.

http://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=597723 http://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=597723#c33 --- Comment #33 from Jozef Uhliarik 2010-04-21 11:51:45 UTC --- Thanks Uwe, configuration is valid and GRUB is also installed without troubles (y2log_bootloader). -- Configure bugmail: http://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug.

http://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=597723 http://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=597723#c35 Jozef Uhliarik changed: What |Removed |Added ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Status|NEEDINFO |NEW InfoProvider|juhliarik@novell.com | --- Comment #35 from Jozef Uhliarik 2010-04-21 13:01:24 UTC --- My test: /dev/sda1 swap 2GB /dev/sda2 / 100GB /dev/sda3 /boot 200MB The system doesn't boot. -- Configure bugmail: http://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug.

http://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=597723 http://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=597723#c37 Torsten Duwe changed: What |Removed |Added ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Status|NEW |NEEDINFO InfoProvider| |juhliarik@novell.com --- Comment #37 from Torsten Duwe 2010-04-21 13:32:42 UTC --- Uwe: yes, you answered that for your part with NO. I'm looking for a single YES. To clarify: no file residing under /boot must contain a disk block that has a higher LBA than 1031184. If someone can manage that, I can continue looking for a "grub bug". Else, it's a BIOS problem for sure. -- Configure bugmail: http://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug.

http://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=597723 http://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=597723#c Torsten Duwe changed: What |Removed |Added ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Summary|GRUB is not able to boot |boot partition may exceed |from partition greater that |certain BIOS limits |60GB | -- Configure bugmail: http://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug.

http://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=597723 http://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=597723#c39 Thomas Fehr changed: What |Removed |Added ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- CC| |kukuk@novell.com, | |mge@novell.com InfoProvider|fehr@novell.com |coolo@novell.com --- Comment #39 from Thomas Fehr 2010-04-22 09:27:53 UTC --- According to Torstens interesting claim in comment #37 BIOS can only reliable boot from the first 503 Megabytes of a disk. Founded on that claim he demands in comment 38 that we change yast2 partitioning code so that we enforce a separate boot partition or a root partition smaller than 503MB for all installation scenarios. Fulfilling this demand would have following slight disadvantages: - coexistence of Windows and Linux would be impossible since most Windows installations are at the start of the disk, larger than 503 MB and Windows shrinking makes space available only at the end of the disk - having multiple installations on the same disk would be much harder. So far there was one root fs for every installation. Now there is a separate partition needed for /boot and one for root for each installation with the additional restriction that every boot partition need to be in starting 503MB of a disk. - Since these restrictions are new, almost all older installations do not fulfil them and update would be impossible from a lot of older secnarios - We are currently at Milestone 5 and it is quite late in development process to rewrite yast2 partitioning code - Lots of old autoyast.xml files would not work any more (the problem was first observed on Uwe's test machine with his standard autoyast test XML file). Because of the above disadvantages, I am a little bit reluctant to change yast2 partitioning code solely on Torsten's demand (and in addition this would not fix the problem of non-booting autoyast installations at all). I am adding SLES people to CC: since the partitioning code is common between SLES and openSuSE and I would prefer to avoid to rewrite the code again for next SLES. So how should we proceed with this bug? -- Configure bugmail: http://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug.

http://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=597723 http://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=597723#c41 --- Comment #41 from Thomas Fehr 2010-04-22 10:38:37 UTC --- Said machine is in use for years and never showed this behaviour. The exact same autoyast XML file that fails to boot with Milestone 5 installs and boots succesfully with every installed openSuSE and SLES release so far. Uwe told me the originally failing scenario was his standard autoyast test XML file which he routinely installs with every release he tests. I consider it extremely unlikely that the BIOS could be much involved here, the BIOS does simply not care if it boots a SLES/openSuSE 11.2/Milestone4/Milestone5 and the disk layout is the same when installing different versions with same XML file via autoyast. Note that I also do not necessrily claim that the problem really is in grub itself. But to be able to investigate the problem there is a profound level of knowledge of grub and booting necessary. On the other hand I consider it quite brave to exclude a grub bug currently. Grub would be the first non-trivial program without bugs. Especially since we have some things new in Milestone 5 that never have been present on any SuSE release. These are: - parted aligns partitions on multiples of 8192 sectors, previouly partitions were aligned on a cylinder boundaries - first release of kernel 2.6.34, good knows what changed - major/minor device numbers of block devices are quite strange since kernel has CONFIG_DEBUG_BLOCK_EXT_DEVT set. Therefore "ls -l /dev/sda*" gives: ugtest:/> ls -l /dev/sda* brw-rw---- 1 root disk 259, 0 Apr 22 05:22 /dev/sda brw-rw---- 1 root disk 259, 524288 Apr 22 04:58 /dev/sda1 brw-rw---- 1 root disk 259, 262144 Apr 22 04:58 /dev/sda2 brw-rw---- 1 root disk 259, 786432 Apr 22 04:58 /dev/sda3 while it tradionally was: Lagrange:/mounts/dist/install # ls -l /dev/sda? brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 1 Apr 19 15:08 /dev/sda1 brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 2 Apr 19 15:09 /dev/sda2 brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 3 Apr 19 15:08 /dev/sda3 So I consider it much more worthwile to at least try to find out what exactly prevents booting a machine that worked fine with all older releases instead of claiming the BIOS must be responsible and grub cannot have any bugs. Any of the above mentioned changes could potentially trigger so far dormant bugs in any low level program. Since there is normally no separate /boot partition there is not much chance in putting it at the front of a disk. Root partitions need to be much larger than 500MB to install a resonable software selection so one hardly can guarantee that file are located on first 500MB of disk. -- Configure bugmail: http://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug.

http://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=597723 http://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=597723#c43 --- Comment #43 from Thomas Fehr 2010-04-22 12:12:32 UTC --- Some more testing showed that it seems that the new alignment in parted of partition start to multiples of 2048 sectors seems to either confuse grub or the BIOS in a way that a considerable percentage of disk layouts that worked fine so far are not bootable. Question is what to do now? We use new alignment to be able to improve performance on disks with 4k sector size and SSD. In addition the new alignment default is the same that Windows Vista and Windows 7 use. So if the BIOS is guilty, this would imply that it should also be impossible to install Windows Vista or Windows 7 on sich a machine if the windows partition does not start at the beginning of the disk. Added parted maintainer to CC: maybe there the same problem was discussed also on parted mailing list. -- Configure bugmail: http://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug.

http://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=597723 http://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=597723#c45 --- Comment #45 from Petr Uzel 2010-04-22 12:51:42 UTC --- (In reply to comment #43)

Some more testing showed that it seems that the new alignment in parted of partition start to multiples of 2048 sectors seems to either confuse grub or the BIOS in a way that a considerable percentage of disk layouts that worked fine so far are not bootable.

Question is what to do now?

It seems that Ubuntu added an option to the partitioner that forces cylinder alignment to work around buggy BIOSes. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/partman-base/+bug/551965 (slightly different bug, but the solution might be the same). -- Configure bugmail: http://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug.

http://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=597723 http://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=597723#c47 --- Comment #47 from Tejun Heo 2010-04-22 15:13:21 UTC --- (In reply to comment #46)

if the BIOS has problems dealing with that, which is a bit strange because it seems the BIOS already successfully loaded grub and after that point I can't think of why partition layout would have any effect on read requests but then again weird BIOS problems are surely conceivable.

The above sentence doesn't really parse. Sorry, I forgot the structure of the sentence in the middle. :-) Anyways, in the ubuntu bug, those machines are hanging while the BIOS is trying to probe the drive which makes sense if it tries to read the partition table and tries to figure out geometry by matching up the CHS and LBA addresses and the code can't handle corner cases very well. I have no idea how vista/w7 deal with them but probably the best we can do is to match dmi data and default to chs alignment on those machines. Thanks. -- Configure bugmail: http://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug.

http://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=597723 http://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=597723#c50 --- Comment #50 from Torsten Duwe 2010-04-28 11:39:34 UTC --- @comment#41: it's a bad idea to use old autoyast profiles, as all the defaults not specified therein are taken from the current tools. For the partitioning: why can't we fake a "geometry" that allows for e.g. 4k alignment AND looks sane to ancient BIOSes? About my overall attitude: I'm sick of looking at "grub bugs", with a new installation, to a new disk, with a huge swap as the first partition. Even better with only a "Windows extended" next, and everything else logical within that, set up for failure. -- Configure bugmail: http://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug.

http://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=597723 http://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=597723#c52 --- Comment #52 from Tejun Heo 2010-04-28 11:46:33 UTC --- Hello, (In reply to comment #50)

For the partitioning: why can't we fake a "geometry" that allows for e.g. 4k alignment AND looks sane to ancient BIOSes?

There just doesn't seem to be any which all the different BIOSes could agree on which is aggravated by the fact that in many cases the first partition goes over the CHS addressing limit so the BIOS doesn't even have enough parameters to match up CHS and LBA addresses. :-( Another worry that I have is about deviating from what windows is doing. Vendors are testing their BIOSes against how windows is doing stuff so deviation might (I almost wanna say 'will' here) lead to strange unexpected problems for relatively modern and future configurations which is usually more important to properly support than older machines. Thanks. -- Configure bugmail: http://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug.

http://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=597723 http://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=597723#c54 Stephan Kulow changed: What |Removed |Added ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Status|NEEDINFO |NEW InfoProvider|coolo@novell.com | --- Comment #54 from Stephan Kulow 2010-04-28 14:10:55 CEST --- I _explicitly_ will not make a decision if the experts can't make up their mind. Basically I'm saying it's ok if openSuse cannot boot after an install to a new machine, as long as it coexists with a windows which isn't there. -- Configure bugmail: http://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug.

http://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=597723 http://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=597723#c56 Thomas Fehr changed: What |Removed |Added ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- AssignedTo|fehr@novell.com |coolo@novell.com --- Comment #56 from Thomas Fehr 2010-04-28 15:14:54 UTC --- Ok, so assign to whomever you see responsible to investigate this. Since I assume your non-decision does not mean I should rewrite partitioning code according to Torstens demands right now I do not think I can do something useful with this currently since I am neither a grub nor a BIOS expert. -- Configure bugmail: http://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug.