GNU bug report logs - #30311
efi-less grub install fails

Previous Next

Full log

Message #14 received at 30311 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Marius Bakke <mbakke <at> fastmail.com>
To: Danny Milosavljevic <dannym <at> scratchpost.org>,
 Ricardo Wurmus <ricardo.wurmus <at> mdc-berlin.de>
Cc: 30311 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#30311: efi-less grub install fails
Date: Thu, 01 Feb 2018 13:40:22 +0100

[Message part 1 (text/plain, inline)]

Danny Milosavljevic <dannym <at> scratchpost.org> writes:

> Hi Ricardo,
>
> On Wed, 31 Jan 2018 19:55:58 +0100
> Ricardo Wurmus <ricardo.wurmus <at> mdc-berlin.de> wrote:
>
>> “guix system init” fails with a configuration file that specifies
>> grub-bootloader (not grub-efi-bootloader).
>> 
>> “grub-install” reports an error about “lib/grub/x86_64-efi/modinfo.sh”
>> not being available.  It suggests passing “--target” or “--device”.
>> 
>> Our invocation of grub-install does not include a “--target” argument.
>> Only after I edited it to pass “--target=i386-pc” did “guix system init”
>> pass.
>
> Hmm, I wonder what happened here.
>
> We've been very careful to keep grub and grub-efi separate.
>
> The entire directory lib/grub/x86_64-efi shouldn't be available in the
> "grub" package output - and I checked on master, it isn't.  Good.
>
> So that leaves automatic target selection as the culprit.
>
> And indeed, there's a call to grub_install_get_default_x86_platform
> in util/grub-install.c .  And that checks for availability of
> /sys/firmware/efi and if it exists, defaults to EFI.
>
> I think it's a bug in grub to do that for a grub which doesn't have EFI
> platform support. :P
>
> We could just always pass i386-pc in install-grub for i386, but then
> we lose i386-ieee1275 (which I have never heard anyone using so maybe
> not so bad).

I agree, passing --target seems like the best workaround for this GRUB
bug.

[signature.asc (application/pgp-signature, inline)]

Previous Next

GNU bug tracking system
Copyright (C) 1999 Darren O. Benham, 1997,2003 nCipher Corporation Ltd, 1994-97 Ian Jackson.