Rawhide / F19 tester PSA: Don't install the F19 fedora-release yet. If you do, don't install a kernel. If you do THAT, don't reboot.

[Adam Williamson]

So I installed fedora-release from the F19 repo and did a yum 
distro-sync today. Then I installed a new kernel build. Then I rebooted.

Then nothing would boot at all.

It turns out this is because the release name of Fedora 19 is:

Schrödinger's Cat

with a single quote used as an apostrophe. That release name gets 
written into the grub entry for a kernel when you're installing it. 
Unfortunately, the lines it goes onto look like this:

menuentry 'Fedora (3.9.0-0.rc2.git0.4.fc20.x86_64) 19 (Schrödinger's 
Cat)' --class fedora --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os 
$menuentry_id_option 
'gnulinux-simple-a749ca4b-0cea-4db0-883d-5c036d89e5c5' {

and:

echo 'Loading Fedora (3.9.0-0.rc2.git0.4.fc20.x86_64) 19 (Schrödinger's 
Cat)'

note how both lines use single quotes for quoting. The single quote in 
the release name terminates the quotes early, and leaves the rest of the 
stuff that's meant to be inside the single quotes as garbage lying 
around the config file.

The upshot of this - for me anyway - is that the entry for the offending 
kernel didn't show up on the grub menu at all, and neither of my other 
kernels would boot, though they did appear (somehow, this borkage causes 
grub not to pass in any kernel parameters). So I was kinda stuck.

The fix was to boot live, mount my /boot partition, edit the grub config 
file, and take the single quotes out of all occurrences of 
"Schrödinger's Cat". I also replaced the umlauted o (that was my first 
guess at the cause of the problem), but I'm not sure if that's necessary.

So - don't get bitten by this :) If you really want to get on the F19 
branch, then just make sure you hand-check your grub config file before 
rebooting.
-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | identi.ca: adamwfedora
http://www.happyassassin.net

[Nicolas Mailhot]

Le Jeu 14 mars 2013 20:57, Adam Williamson a écrit :

>  So - don't get bitten by this :) If you really want to get on the
> F19
>  branch, then just make sure you hand-check your grub config file before
>  rebooting. 
Thank you for posting this I was trying to understand why grub refused to
propose new kernels in boot menu.

May I point out the problem would have been averted by using the correct
unicode typographical apostrophe ’ (U+2019) instead of ' (U+0027) which is
several symbols squatting on a single codepoint?

Regards,

-- 
Nicolas Mailhot

[Dave Jones]

On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 09:12:58PM +0100, Nicolas Mailhot wrote:
>  
>  Le Jeu 14 mars 2013 20:57, Adam Williamson a écrit :
>  
>  > So - don't get bitten by this :) If you really want to get on the F19
>  > branch, then just make sure you hand-check your grub config file before
>  > rebooting.
>  
>  Thank you for posting this I was trying to understand why grub refused to
>  propose new kernels in boot menu.
>  
>  May I point out the problem would have been averted by using the correct
>  unicode typographical apostrophe ’ (U+2019) instead of ' (U+0027) which is
>  several symbols squatting on a single codepoint? 
or.. not putting the codename in the bootloader strings at all ?

	Dave

[Adam Williamson]

On 14/03/13 01:12 PM, Nicolas Mailhot wrote:
>  Le Jeu 14 mars 2013 20:57, Adam Williamson a écrit :
>
> > So - don't get bitten by this :) If you really want to get on the F19
> > branch, then just make sure you hand-check your grub config file before
> > rebooting.
>
>  Thank you for posting this I was trying to understand why grub refused to
>  propose new kernels in boot menu.
>
>  May I point out the problem would have been averted by using the correct
>  unicode typographical apostrophe ’ (U+2019) instead of ' (U+0027) which is
>  several symbols squatting on a single codepoint? 
You may, and after pjones, you'd be the second one to do so =)
-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | identi.ca: adamwfedora
http://www.happyassassin.net

[Kevin Fenzi]

I'll note that this does not affect rawhide installs, unless you first
installed fedora-release-19. 

If you went to fedora-release-20 to follow rawhide, everything is fine. 

kevin

[Nicolas Mailhot]

Le Jeu 14 mars 2013 21:26, Kevin Fenzi a écrit :
>  I'll note that this does not affect rawhide installs, unless you
> first
>  installed fedora-release-19.
>
>  If you went to fedora-release-20 to follow rawhide, everything is fine. 
Sure, I got autobranched automatically. It usually takes me longer to
notice and get annoyed enough to return to rawhide:)

-- 
Nicolas Mailhot

[Kevin Fenzi]

On Thu, 14 Mar 2013 21:51:49 +0100
"Nicolas Mailhot" <nicolas.mailhot(a)laposte.net&gt; wrote:

>  
>  Le Jeu 14 mars 2013 21:26, Kevin Fenzi a écrit :
>  > I'll note that this does not affect rawhide installs, unless you
>  > first installed fedora-release-19.
>  >
>  > If you went to fedora-release-20 to follow rawhide, everything is
>  > fine.
>  
>  Sure, I got autobranched automatically. It usually takes me longer to
>  notice and get annoyed enough to return to rawhide:) 
:) 

I am sticking with rawhide this cycle. Hopefully I can bother enough
people to keep it usable year round. 

kevin

[Dan Mashal]

On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 2:06 PM, Kevin Fenzi <kevin(a)scrye.com&gt; wrote:
>  On Thu, 14 Mar 2013 21:51:49 +0100
>  "Nicolas Mailhot" <nicolas.mailhot(a)laposte.net&gt; wrote:
>
> >
> > Le Jeu 14 mars 2013 21:26, Kevin Fenzi a écrit :
> > > I'll note that this does not affect rawhide installs, unless you
> > > first installed fedora-release-19.
> > >
> > > If you went to fedora-release-20 to follow rawhide, everything is
> > > fine.
> >
> > Sure, I got autobranched automatically. It usually takes me longer to
> > notice and get annoyed enough to return to rawhide:)
>
>  :)
>
>  I am sticking with rawhide this cycle. Hopefully I can bother enough
>  people to keep it usable year round.
>
>  kevin
>
>  --
>  devel mailing list
>  devel(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
>  https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel 
Yes, this is what I was whining about last night.

Dan

[Kevin Kofler]

Adam Williamson wrote:
>  Then nothing would boot at all.
>  
>  It turns out this is because the release name of Fedora 19 is:
>  
>  Schrödinger's Cat
>  
>  with a single quote used as an apostrophe. That release name gets
>  written into the grub entry for a kernel when you're installing it.
>  Unfortunately, the lines it goes onto look like this:
>  
>  menuentry 'Fedora (3.9.0-0.rc2.git0.4.fc20.x86_64) 19 (Schrödinger's
>  Cat)' --class fedora --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os
>  $menuentry_id_option
>  'gnulinux-simple-a749ca4b-0cea-4db0-883d-5c036d89e5c5' {
>  
>  and:
>  
>  echo 'Loading Fedora (3.9.0-0.rc2.git0.4.fc20.x86_64) 19 (Schrödinger's
>  Cat)'
>  
>  note how both lines use single quotes for quoting. The single quote in
>  the release name terminates the quotes early, and leaves the rest of the
>  stuff that's meant to be inside the single quotes as garbage lying
>  around the config file. 
http://xkcd.com/327/ ;-)

        Kevin Kofler