recent kernel upgrades damage mbr

Mikkel L. Ellertson mikkel at infinity-ltd.com
Wed Jun 18 13:44:55 UTC 2008


Gene Heskett wrote:
> 
> So yes, if it silently rewrote the mbr, it will just as silently rewrite the 
> device.map, and this list will, whenever I do manage to get it booted again, 
> hear from one very unhappy camper.
> 
It should not re-write the device map, so I would report this as a 
big. The install script needs to check if there is a device map 
file, and honor it.

> So thanks for the warning, I'm off to dd a backup of the mbr and /boot/grub to a 
> usb key and to what is now /dev/sdc in hopes I can recover from such a 
> boneheaded 'upgrade'.
> 
This is not going to help, because the old MBR will be pointing to 
the wrong location for stage 1.5, so you will get an error on boot. 
Remember, the part of GRub that is in the MBR loads from a fixed 
disk location. It does not read the file system. So, unless stage 
1.5 is in the same place on the disk, (head, cylinder, sector) it is 
not going to be able to load it.

Your best bet is to fix the device map, and run grub-install.

Mikkel
-- 

   Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons,
for thou art crunchy and taste good with Ketchup!

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