Ubuntu
grub package

Upgrade caused dual-boot grub to destroy Win2K disk

Bug #62334 reported by Hexatron
6
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
grub (Ubuntu)
Invalid
Undecided
Ralph Janke

Bug Description

Binary package hint: upgrade-system

On September 23 2006 I was running Ubuntu Dapper Drake and got the upgrades suggested ( there were more than 30). The upgrades included a new kernel.

The PC this was on has two disk drives--
hda was a Windows 2000 disk with a windows mbr
hdb was a Ubuntu linux disk booting grub (with an entry for the windows 2000 boot)
The BIOS was set to boot from hdb.

After the upgrade:
The boot from hdb failed both for Ubuntu and Win2K
The Win2k mbr had been over-written.

I removed the Ubuntu disk and reinstalled the Win2k mbr. It booted Win2k but stopped after login. I tried fixing the Win2k OS with the install disk, but the disk found no problems.

Apparantly, the Ubuntu upgrade deposited a few sectors of crap at the beginning of the Win2k disk (which it should not have touched at all--grub, /boot, all the
linux stuff was on hdb).

Revision history for this message
Martin-Éric Racine (q-funk) wrote :

The only explanation that comes to mind for what you describe above would be a GRUB upgrade that made wrong assumptions about which OS resides on what drive.

In any case, I cannot see how upgrade-system would have caused this, since it's only an APT front-end.

Revision history for this message
Ralph Janke (txwikinger) wrote :

Thanks for submitting this bug report.

Could you, or have you been able to mount the windows partition from a linux system i.e. Knoppix? What evidence that would help use to understand how the problem occurred, do you have for your assumption that more than the MBR has been overwritten?

Without more information, I fear, we will not be able to reproduce the problem, therefore I would like to close this bug if this is ok with you.

Thanks

Changed in grub:
assignee: nobody → rjanke
status: Unconfirmed → Needs Info
Revision history for this message
Ralph Janke (txwikinger) wrote :

No feedback within a month. Therefore, I close this report. If there is more information, please re-open it.

Thanks

Changed in grub:
status: Needs Info → Rejected
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