preupgrade grub2 failed: now can't boot

[Michael Cronenworth]

Greg Woods wrote:
> This is the area at the beginning of the disk, before the first
> partition. Grub2 needs the first partition to start at 2048, but default
> partition layouts from Grub-1 systems start at 63. I have run into this
> several times and it is a royal pain. There may be some games you can
> play with gparted (shrink the partition, then move it), or you can do
> like I did, which is to dump the first partition, change it to start at
> 2048 (shrinking it a bit), making a new file system on the new
> partition, and restoring it.

There is a way to force grub2 to install on systems with small starting 
areas. I have a system with only 64 sectors (0-63) running grub2 just fine.

Yes, preupgrade should catch these cases before doing any work. Since 
I've gone through all the pain on several systems I'm too tired to file 
an RFE.