Subject: bug#27372: GRUB 2.02 hangs on pre-UEFI Dell Poweredge 2950

From: [email-masked] (Ludovic Courtès)
Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2017 11:18:08 +0200

Hello,

GRUB as found in the 0.13.0 installation image hangs after printing the
four letters “GRUB” in console mode on a pre-UEFI Dell Poweredge 2950
server (something that’s roughly ten years old.)

I built an image where GRUB’s graphical terminal output was disabled:

  (grub-configuration
    (device "/dev/sda")
    (terminal-outputs '(console)))

… but that didn’t help.

Conversely, Debian’s ‘grub-pc’ 2.02~beta3-5 package doesn’t have this
problem.   Debian’s ‘grub.cfg’ prologue is similar to ours so I suspect
the problem is in GRUB itself.  Debian has “quite a few” patches for
GRUB though:
<https://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/pkg-grub/grub.git/tree/debian/patches>.

Has anyone experienced this?

Thanks,
Ludo’.