[bug #35382] grub-install-generated EFI boot image cannot find prefix: "invalid sector size 65535".

[Nick Bowler]

URL:
  <http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?35382>

                 Summary: grub-install-generated EFI boot image cannot find
prefix: "invalid sector size 65535".
                 Project: GNU GRUB
            Submitted by: draconx
            Submitted on: Thu 26 Jan 2012 10:51:01 PM EST
                Category: Booting
                Severity: Major
                Priority: 5 - Normal
              Item Group: Software Error
                  Status: None
                 Privacy: Public
             Assigned to: None
         Originator Name: 
        Originator Email: 
             Open/Closed: Open
         Discussion Lock: Any
                 Release: 
                 Release: Bazaar - trunk
         Reproducibility: Every Time
         Planned Release: None

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Details:

I'm booting grub from EFI (x86_64).  However, the image that grub-install
generates fails to boot: I am presented with the (rather stark) error message
"invalid sector size 65535" and I am immediately dropped to the rescue shell.
Some quick poking around reveals that this error occurs whenever I attempt to
access (hd0), which I suspect is an empty card reader slot.

The system will boot correctly if I set prefix=(hd4,1)/boot/grub2; insmod
normal; normal at the rescue shell, but this means that unattended reboot is
impossible.  I've attached a photograph of a session with the rescue shell.

The grub manual §27.1 "GRUB only offers a rescue shell" says that "... it is
usually better to use UUIDs or file system labels and avoid depending on
drive
ordering entirely." but it gives absolutely zero information about how one
goes about doing this.  The rest of the manual barely talks about uuids or
labels except in the context of the "search" command in grub.cfg, which is
obviously not applicable here.  I tried both

  grub-install UUID=b4202fb7-1102-4a95-a8a4-ce92e1620049

and

  grub-install LABEL=aura-root

to no avail.

One other place the manual mentions UUIDs is in the context of an embedded
config file.  Curious, I looked at how grub-install sets this up, and I see
that it only sets up UUID search if "disk_module" is nonempty (plus some
other
possibilities that ostensibly don't apply to my setup).  However, disk_module
is unconditionally set to empty for EFI platforms and the (undocumented)
--disk-module option is silently ignored on non-BIOS platforms.  I edited the
script to set this up unconditionally (patch attached), re-ran grub-install
and
the system boots unattended, although the error message "invalid sector size
65535" is still displayed for a moment before the menu appears.




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File Attachments:


-------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu 26 Jan 2012 10:51:01 PM EST  Name: grub-rescue.jpg  Size: 77kB   By:
draconx

<http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/download.php?file_id=24901>
-------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu 26 Jan 2012 10:51:01 PM EST  Name: grub-install-uuid.patch  Size:
838B   By: draconx

<http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/download.php?file_id=24902>

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