| 1 |
Hi All, |
| 2 |
|
| 3 |
A slightly off-topic question arising from a different distro, which may |
| 4 |
replicate itself on Gentoo. |
| 5 |
|
| 6 |
I installed Mint-Linux, in a VM. The host PC MoBo has a legacy BIOS system. |
| 7 |
I used a GPT scheme to create partitions on the virtual disk. The first 1M on |
| 8 |
the virtual disk was left empty by gdisk. I thought GRUB can use this for its |
| 9 |
core image. Note, I did not create a partition in this 1MB empty space at the |
| 10 |
start of the disk. |
| 11 |
|
| 12 |
While running the Mint Installer I got a warning from its partition manager |
| 13 |
telling me I had not specified a BIOS_grub partition and the installation may |
| 14 |
fail. I ignored the warning and continued with the installation, which |
| 15 |
completed successfully. |
| 16 |
|
| 17 |
A few weeks later I ran an update which among other packages updated grub2- |
| 18 |
common. An ncurses menu popped up warning me: |
| 19 |
|
| 20 |
"The GRUB boot loaders was previously installed to a disk that is no longer |
| 21 |
present, or whose unique identifier has changed for some reason". |
| 22 |
|
| 23 |
It offered to install in /dev/vda, /dev/vda1, or /dev/vda2. I selected /dev/ |
| 24 |
vda which represents the virtual disk. It failed to install in /dev/vda |
| 25 |
because the device did not contain a BIOS_grub partition. |
| 26 |
|
| 27 |
I tried 'grub-install --force' and --boot-directory options, but in all cases |
| 28 |
it failed to install. At the end I had to create a new 1M partition with |
| 29 |
gdisk and set its type to ef02 (BIOS boot partition), before grub would |
| 30 |
install its core image successfully. |
| 31 |
|
| 32 |
|
| 33 |
QUESTIONS: |
| 34 |
|
| 35 |
Why/how the initial installation succeeded without an ef02 partition, but a |
| 36 |
grub package update would not proceed without it? Where did the Mint |
| 37 |
installer store the grub core image to be able to continue with the |
| 38 |
installation? |
| 39 |
|
| 40 |
-- |
| 41 |
Regards, |
| 42 |
Mick |
Archives