GRUB prompt after F29 to F30 upgrade

[Chris Murphy]

Just a heads up that this can be an issue, but I'm not sure how common
it is. It applies to BIOS (not UEFI) firmware, and for systems that
originally had Fedora 20 or older installed and also never had
'grub2-install' issued since then. Therefore it can be prevented just
by running 'grub2-install' before commencing the Fedora 30 upgrade.

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Common_F30_bugs#GRUB_boot_menu_is_not_popu...

It's worth going through all the Common Bugs.

-- 
Chris Murphy

[Patrick O'Callaghan]

On Tue, 2019-04-30 at 16:03 -0600, Chris Murphy wrote:
>  Just a heads up that this can be an issue, but I'm not sure how
> common
>  it is. It applies to BIOS (not UEFI) firmware, and for systems that
>  originally had Fedora 20 or older installed and also never had
>  'grub2-install' issued since then. Therefore it can be prevented just
>  by running 'grub2-install' before commencing the Fedora 30 upgrade.
>  
>
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Common_F30_bugs#GRUB_boot_menu_is_not_popu...
>  
>  It's worth going through all the Common Bugs. 
The text actually says:

   So if you have an installation that has been updated since Fedora 20
   or before, it is recommended to execute the grub2-install command
   before doing a system upgrade. 

I assume that should say "... if you have an installation that has NOT
been updated since Fedora 20 or before ..."

poc

[Chris Murphy]

On Tue, Apr 30, 2019 at 4:17 PM Patrick O'Callaghan
<pocallaghan(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
>  On Tue, 2019-04-30 at 16:03 -0600, Chris Murphy wrote:
>  > Just a heads up that this can be an issue, but I'm not sure how common
>  > it is. It applies to BIOS (not UEFI) firmware, and for systems that
>  > originally had Fedora 20 or older installed and also never had
>  > 'grub2-install' issued since then. Therefore it can be prevented just
>  > by running 'grub2-install' before commencing the Fedora 30 upgrade.
>  >
>  >
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Common_F30_bugs#GRUB_boot_menu_is_not_popu...
>  >
>  > It's worth going through all the Common Bugs.
>
>  The text actually says:
>
>     So if you have an installation that has been updated since Fedora 20
>     or before, it is recommended to execute the grub2-install command
>     before doing a system upgrade.
>
>  I assume that should say "... if you have an installation that has NOT
>  been updated since Fedora 20 or before ..." 
Good catch. I fixed that, and made a few other clean ups, let me know
if you spot any other problems.

-- 
Chris Murphy

[Todd Zullinger]

Chris Murphy wrote:
>  On Tue, Apr 30, 2019 at 4:17 PM Patrick O'Callaghan
>  <pocallaghan(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
> >
> > On Tue, 2019-04-30 at 16:03 -0600, Chris Murphy wrote:
> >> Just a heads up that this can be an issue, but I'm not sure how common
> >> it is. It applies to BIOS (not UEFI) firmware, and for systems that
> >> originally had Fedora 20 or older installed and also never had
> >> 'grub2-install' issued since then. Therefore it can be prevented just
> >> by running 'grub2-install' before commencing the Fedora 30 upgrade.
> >>
> >>
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Common_F30_bugs#GRUB_boot_menu_is_not_popu...
> >>
> >> It's worth going through all the Common Bugs.
> >
> > The text actually says:
> >
> >    So if you have an installation that has been updated since Fedora 20
> >    or before, it is recommended to execute the grub2-install command
> >    before doing a system upgrade.
> >
> > I assume that should say "... if you have an installation that has NOT
> > been updated since Fedora 20 or before ..."
>  
>  Good catch. I fixed that, and made a few other clean ups, let me know
>  if you spot any other problems. 
I thing it was correct before, but perhaps it could still be
improved.  (Obviously, the wording isn't as clear as it can
be or we wouldn't be having this conversation. ;)

What I took from the prior wording is that if you installed
Fedora 20 or earlier and then only updated the OS since (and
had not manually run grub2-update), that you would hit this
bug.

-- 
Todd

[Sam Varshavchik]

Chris Murphy writes:

>  On Tue, Apr 30, 2019 at 4:17 PM Patrick O'Callaghan
>  <pocallaghan(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
>  >
>  > On Tue, 2019-04-30 at 16:03 -0600, Chris Murphy wrote:
>  > > Just a heads up that this can be an issue, but I'm not sure how common
>  > > it is. It applies to BIOS (not UEFI) firmware, and for systems that
>  > > originally had Fedora 20 or older installed and also never had
>  > > 'grub2-install' issued since then. Therefore it can be prevented just
>  > > by running 'grub2-install' before commencing the Fedora 30 upgrade.
>  > >
>  > >  
>
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Common_F30_bugs#GRUB_boot_menu_is_not_popu...
>  > >
>  > > It's worth going through all the Common Bugs.
>  >
>  > The text actually says:
>  >
>  >    So if you have an installation that has been updated since Fedora 20
>  >    or before, it is recommended to execute the grub2-install command
>  >    before doing a system upgrade.
>  >
>  > I assume that should say "... if you have an installation that has NOT
>  > been updated since Fedora 20 or before ..."
>
>  Good catch. I fixed that, and made a few other clean ups, let me know
>  if you spot any other problems. 
Since grub2-install requires a parameter that specifies a boot device, it  
would be helpful to provide some pointers to figure out what your boot  
device is.

[Chris Murphy]

On Tue, Apr 30, 2019 at 7:21 PM Todd Zullinger <tmz(a)pobox.com&gt; wrote:
>  Chris Murphy wrote:
>  > On Tue, Apr 30, 2019 at 4:17 PM Patrick O'Callaghan
>  > <pocallaghan(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
>  >>
>  >> On Tue, 2019-04-30 at 16:03 -0600, Chris Murphy wrote:
>  >>> Just a heads up that this can be an issue, but I'm not sure how common
>  >>> it is. It applies to BIOS (not UEFI) firmware, and for systems that
>  >>> originally had Fedora 20 or older installed and also never had
>  >>> 'grub2-install' issued since then. Therefore it can be prevented
> just
>  >>> by running 'grub2-install' before commencing the Fedora 30 upgrade.
>  >>>
>  >>>
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Common_F30_bugs#GRUB_boot_menu_is_not_popu...
>  >>>
>  >>> It's worth going through all the Common Bugs.
>  >>
>  >> The text actually says:
>  >>
>  >>    So if you have an installation that has been updated since Fedora 20
>  >>    or before, it is recommended to execute the grub2-install command
>  >>    before doing a system upgrade.
>  >>
>  >> I assume that should say "... if you have an installation that has NOT
>  >> been updated since Fedora 20 or before ..."
>  >
>  > Good catch. I fixed that, and made a few other clean ups, let me know
>  > if you spot any other problems.
>
>  I thing it was correct before, but perhaps it could still be
>  improved.  (Obviously, the wording isn't as clear as it can
>  be or we wouldn't be having this conversation. ;)
>
>  What I took from the prior wording is that if you installed
>  Fedora 20 or earlier and then only updated the OS since (and
>  had not manually run grub2-update), that you would hit this
>  bug. 
It happens if the most recent 'grub2-install' happened with a Fedora
20 or older GRUB package. e.g. if you installed Fedora 20 clean, then
did an OS upgrade every 6-12 months all the way through to Fedora 30,
then you'd probably run into this bug. But if at any point from Fedora
21 and newer you ever did a 'grub2-install' you won't hit it.

-- 
Chris Murphy

[Tom H]

On Wed, May 1, 2019 at 2:49 AM Chris Murphy <lists(a)colorremedies.com&gt; wrote:
>  On Tue, Apr 30, 2019 at 4:17 PM Patrick O'Callaghan
>  <pocallaghan(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
> > On Tue, 2019-04-30 at 16:03 -0600, Chris Murphy wrote:
> >>
> >> Just a heads up that this can be an issue, but I'm not sure how
> >> common it is. It applies to BIOS (not UEFI) firmware, and for
> >> systems that originally had Fedora 20 or older installed and also
> >> never had 'grub2-install' issued since then. Therefore it can be
> >> prevented just by running 'grub2-install' before commencing the
> >> Fedora 30 upgrade.
> >>
> >>
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Common_F30_bugs#GRUB_boot_menu_is_not_popu...
> >>
> >> It's worth going through all the Common Bugs.
> >
> > The text actually says:
> >
> > So if you have an installation that has been updated since Fedora
> > 20 or before, it is recommended to execute the grub2-install
> > command before doing a system upgrade.
> >
> > I assume that should say "... if you have an installation that has
> > NOT been updated since Fedora 20 or before ..."
>
>  Good catch. I fixed that, and made a few other clean ups, let me
>  know if you spot any other problems. 
Strictly speaking, grub has been updated if you've upgraded from F20
to F30. But the grub stages and the grub modules haven't been updated.

[Tom H]

On Wed, May 1, 2019 at 3:21 AM Todd Zullinger <tmz(a)pobox.com&gt; wrote:
>  What I took from the prior wording is that if you installed Fedora
>  20 or earlier and then only updated the OS since (and had not
>  manually run grub2-update), that you would hit this bug. 
"grub2-install" not "grub2-update".

[Charles R. Dennett]

On 5/1/19 5:25 AM, Tom H wrote:
>  On Wed, May 1, 2019 at 3:21 AM Todd Zullinger <tmz(a)pobox.com&gt;
> wrote:
> >
> > What I took from the prior wording is that if you installed Fedora
> > 20 or earlier and then only updated the OS since (and had not
> > manually run grub2-update), that you would hit this bug.
>  
>  "grub2-install" not "grub2-update". 
Is there any way to tell just by looking for the presence or absence of
any particular file or directory that you would run into this bug?

[Tom H]

On Wed, May 1, 2019 at 12:48 PM Charles R. Dennett <cdennett(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
>  On 5/1/19 5:25 AM, Tom H wrote:
> > On Wed, May 1, 2019 at 3:21 AM Todd Zullinger <tmz(a)pobox.com&gt; wrote:
> >>
> >> What I took from the prior wording is that if you installed Fedora
> >> 20 or earlier and then only updated the OS since (and had not
> >> manually run grub2-update), that you would hit this bug.
> >
> > "grub2-install" not "grub2-update".
>
>  Is there any way to tell just by looking for the presence or absence
>  of any particular file or directory that you would run into this
>  bug? 
1) The existence of "/boot/grub2/i386-pc/blscfg.mod" should be a good
indication because it's an F29 addition (AFAIR). But I couldn't tell
you whether the F29 version'll work correctly with the F30 version.

Unless you're multi-booting and grub's managed by another
distribution, you may as well run "grub2-install /dev/...". The bug
report says that it's supposed to be fragile, but it last failed for
me seven years ago (more or less) with "/boot" on mdraid1. Maybe I've
just been lucky...

Whether you're multi-booting or not, there's an invocation of
"grub2-install" that doesn't update the MBR, "grub2-install
--grub-setup=/bin/true /dev/...". In the early days of grub2
(v1.9[78]?), you could have boot problems if the versions of the
modules embedded in the MBR/MBR-gap stages differed from the
"/boot/grub/i386-pc" versions, but, AFAIK, this hasn't been an issue
for a while.

2) You can compare the versions that are output by

grep version /boot/grub/i386-pc/modinfo.sh
and
grub2-probe --version

[Charles R. Dennett]

On 5/1/19 11:07 AM, Tom H wrote:
>  On Wed, May 1, 2019 at 12:48 PM Charles R. Dennett
> <cdennett(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
> >
> > Is there any way to tell just by looking for the presence or absence
> > of any particular file or directory that you would run into this
> > bug?
>  
>  Unless you're multi-booting and grub's managed by another
>  distribution, you may as well run "grub2-install /dev/...". The bug
>  report says that it's supposed to be fragile, but it last failed for
>  me seven years ago (more or less) with "/boot" on mdraid1. Maybe I've
>  just been lucky... 

I went ahead and run grub2-install /dev/sda and rebooted.  All seems
well.  No changes in the boot process that I could see.  I still get the
kernel menu and then it boots and I get all the messages about what's
starting.  (I removed the rhgb and quiet option years ago.  As an old
retired Linux/Solaris admin I prefer to see things happening.  It just
makes me feel better.)

[Ralf Corsepius]

On 5/1/19 8:24 AM, Chris Murphy wrote:

>  It happens if the most recent 'grub2-install' happened with a
> Fedora
>  20 or older GRUB package. e.g. if you installed Fedora 20 clean, then
>  did an OS upgrade every 6-12 months all the way through to Fedora 30,
>  then you'd probably run into this bug. But if at any point from Fedora
>  21 and newer you ever did a 'grub2-install' you won't hit it. 
I am not sure if this applies in my case and don't have any possibility 
to check for it anymore.

The pecularity of my system, is it using a gpt formated boot disk though 
it being a BIOS system (Using a 1M BIOS boot partition).

Does Fedora's updater support this case? The installer does.

Ralf

[Tom H]

On Wed, May 1, 2019 at 7:19 PM Charles R. Dennett <cdennett(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
>  On 5/1/19 11:07 AM, Tom H wrote:
> > On Wed, May 1, 2019 at 12:48 PM Charles R. Dennett <cdennett(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
> >>
> >> Is there any way to tell just by looking for the presence or absence
> >> of any particular file or directory that you would run into this
> >> bug?
> >
> > Unless you're multi-booting and grub's managed by another
> > distribution, you may as well run "grub2-install /dev/...". The bug
> > report says that it's supposed to be fragile, but it last failed for
> > me seven years ago (more or less) with "/boot" on mdraid1. Maybe I've
> > just been lucky...
>
>  I went ahead and run grub2-install /dev/sda and rebooted. All seems
>  well. No changes in the boot process that I could see. I still get the
>  kernel menu and then it boots and I get all the messages about what's
>  starting. (I removed the rhgb and quiet option years ago. As an old
>  retired Linux/Solaris admin I prefer to see things happening. It just
>  makes me feel better.) 
Good :)

There shouldn't be a difference. BLS means that the grub menu's built
from "/boot/loader/entries/*" instead of from a monolithic
"/boor/grub2/grub.cfg".

I had to use "grub2-switch-to-blscfg" for the switch to be made, for a
new install using dnf instead of anaconda. The latter might set up BLS
by default (does anyone know?).

[Tom H]

On Thu, May 2, 2019 at 8:10 AM Ralf Corsepius <rc040203(a)freenet.de&gt; wrote:
>  On 5/1/19 8:24 AM, Chris Murphy wrote:
>
> > It happens if the most recent 'grub2-install' happened with a Fedora
> > 20 or older GRUB package. e.g. if you installed Fedora 20 clean, then
> > did an OS upgrade every 6-12 months all the way through to Fedora 30,
> > then you'd probably run into this bug. But if at any point from Fedora
> > 21 and newer you ever did a 'grub2-install' you won't hit it.
>
>  I am not sure if this applies in my case and don't have any possibility
>  to check for it anymore.
>
>  The pecularity of my system, is it using a gpt formated boot disk though
>  it being a BIOS system (Using a 1M BIOS boot partition).
>
>  Does Fedora's updater support this case? The installer does. 
The difference between dos- and gpt-labelled disks on bios firmware is
that "core.img" is embedded in the MBR gap and in a bios-boot
partition respectively.

[David Dusanic]

Am 01.05.19 um 00:03 schrieb Chris Murphy:
>  Just a heads up that this can be an issue, but I'm not sure how
> common
>  it is. It applies to BIOS (not UEFI) firmware, and for systems that
>  originally had Fedora 20 or older installed and also never had
>  'grub2-install' issued since then. Therefore it can be prevented just
>  by running 'grub2-install' before commencing the Fedora 30 upgrade.
>  
>
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Common_F30_bugs#GRUB_boot_menu_is_not_popu...
>  
>  It's worth going through all the Common Bugs.
>   
I am not entirely sure about this issue and now I have read all the 
posts about it and this Grub 'lesson' is just not getting into me.

So far the upgrade went fine as usual in my case. And now why I am 
replying here. My legacy boot has Grub and instead of booting into the 
newest Fedora 30 kernel it boots by default into an older one from 
Fedora 29. I never saw this before. So I have to catch up before the 
Grub prompt automatically selects the second kernel in the boot menu.

Anybody experiencing this?

-- 
David Dusanic