grub-mount hangs when update-grub is ran

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

Apparently this bug causes Precise installation to freeze : ubiquity needs os-prober to detect partitions and other OSes. And os-prober calls grub-mount which hangs if an hfs+ partition exists.

See : http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1966261

or : http://forum.ubuntu-fr.org/viewtopic.php?id=897031 (in french).

Same issue with my MacBook Air and HFS+ partition.
So I killed grub-mount for precise install and I kill it for do upgrades

Le 03/05/2012 18:55, Eric Zig a écrit :
> Same issue with my MacBook Air and HFS+ partition.
> So I killed grub-mount for precise install and I kill it for do upgrades
>
Same thing here. I have 3 hfs+ volumes and I'm tired to kill -9
grub-mount each time grub-update.
Since grub-update do a grub-mount in a loop, I have to kill it 3 times
in a row.

Seb

Bug 992940 is probably an installation failure because of this.

And bug 990173 and bug 985874

I think #992940 and #990173 are duplicate of this bug

when I tried to install Precise 64bits, I had freeze like them.
So I start live sessions, start Ubiquity and when it freeze,
I do kill -9 grub-mount,
and the installation continues

I rebuild grub2 from upstream.
I confirm that simply replacing the grub-mount executable by the newer make the hangs vanish.
The grub-update comples sucessfully. No more kill -9 on the grub-mount.

See bug 1002461.

Bug is not exclusive to hfs, I do see it on jfs too.

Second: Building upstream and replacing grub-mount does not help.

Same bug here on MacBook air mid 2011. Very annoying.

Indeed, trying to replace grub-mound executable from QQ repository does not help. I've seen some exchanges on the web between what seems to be the developers of grub and they seemed to be happy about the correction of this bug. Have someone found where is the source of this corrected version of grub-mount and how to compile it under PP ?

Thanks,
Jacques

Meanwhile, I managed to compile "grub-mount" from the source repository of grub (http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/) with the lastest known version (bzr branch http://bzr.savannah.gnu.org/r/grub/trunk/grub). I replaced the buggy ubuntu binary with the one I just compiled...and it works !

You can just download this executable and copy it in /usr/bin to fix this issue on this webpage :

http://newlsiit.u-strasbg.fr/avr_fr/index.php/12.04_LTS_on_MacBook_Air_mid_2011

After refit I have now the standard grub boot menu allowing me to select various boot option (Linux, memtest, Mac OSX, ...)

Jacques

Same issue on a Macbook Air late 2010 (MacBookAir3,2). Killing grub-mount lets ubiquity continue to install, else it's frozen like death. Didn't try the binary from Jacques.

Note that I must kill grub-mount many times during the installation process: before typing my personnal details, after taking a photo with the webcam... I let a terminal open and launch "sudo killall -9 grub-mount" everytime things seem to hang. It succeeded at least 3 times (installation is still going on).

Regards,

I have the same problem on a macbookpro 8,1

I don't know how to "rebuild grub2 from upstream".
Can anybody explain me please ?

Thank you

5 days that I'm on this bug !
I can't understand that it can works fine for some ones...

"I have recently installed Ubuntu 12.04 on my MacBook Pro 8.2 so that I can dualboot. Installation went fine and everything seems to be working great..."
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2046751

"I installed Mountain Lion first then the latest version of refit followed by Windows 7 and all worked perfect. I then installed the latest desktop release of Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS x64 which again installed absolutely fine."
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2047663

How does it's possible !!!

Le 01/09/2012 02:43, Yonnel Bécognée a écrit :
> 5 days that I'm on this bug !
> I can't understand that it can works fine for some ones...
>
> "I have recently installed Ubuntu 12.04 on my MacBook Pro 8.2 so that I can dualboot. Installation went fine and everything seems to be working great..."
> http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2046751
>
> "I installed Mountain Lion first then the latest version of refit followed by Windows 7 and all worked perfect. I then installed the latest desktop release of Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS x64 which again installed absolutely fine."
> http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2047663
>
> How does it's possible !!!
>
Workaroud is to kill -9 grub-mount.
The exact report is it depends on the hf+ filesystem. Somtimes, the hfs
driver goes into an infinite loop while reading the metadata.

The exact condition under which this problem happens is unknow.

Seb

If anyone suffering from this bug is running quantal, I'd appreciate testing of my preliminary 2.00 packages:

  https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2012-September/035887.html

There've been a number of upstream changes to the hfsplus driver, and it's quite possible that one of them has fixed this bug.

The 2.00 packages are now available in quantal and it would be really helpful if someone could test this bug again with quantal. Thanks in advance!

New packages is ok. The previous fixe was to compile a grub-mount from uptodate upstream.
Since the new version is in ubuntu the bug can be considered fixed.
However, could you backport the new version to the previous LTS version.
I think upgrading the grub packages in previous supported boot image would benefit to many.

I agree on the last comment : if the bug is fixed for Quantal, it would be really useful to backport it to Precise, especially because it is the LTS and, as such, recommanded by many people for an install out there.

I'm not sure how many people install Linux along with Mac, but I think it covers more than a few Ubunteros ! ;)

OK, we can consider trying to track down the relevant commit(s) for 12.04.3, then. It may not be quite straightforward because there were several relevant changes and I'd need to work out exactly which one caused them.

If anyone has an HFS+ filesystem whose contents they might be able to share publicly and which isn't too gigantic, it might help to take an image of it with dd and post it somewhere.

Of course I mean an HFS+ filesystem which triggered the grub-mount hang before.

Sorry, I can't: professional data... I've posted a message on the French Ubuntu forum saying that you were looking for one, though!

Hi guys ! I'm just fishing for news: is there a plan to add the bug fix into the 12.04.3 release or before? I'm getting tired of the "sudo killall -9 grub-mount" on every grub-update (not that there is many though...).

I know you guys have a lot of work: I'm not complaining, just asking ! ;)

I'm waiting for a released fix on this one too. (I can't install ubuntu on a couple of servers).

Is there any way of making an ISO, with this fix applied, myself ?

I've got the same bug on Ubuntu 13.10 without hsf filesystem. I've only ext3/ext4 .

I'm also affected by this on Ubuntu/precise (Mint/maya). I have my internal laptop drive with dual boot HFS+/Mac OS X and ext4/GNU/Linux. The grub-mount hang never happens with that disk. It does happen when my external backup disk is attached. I thought maybe it had something to do with how the disks were partitioned. Here's my internal disk that works fine:

$ sudo parted /dev/sda
GNU Parted 2.3
Using /dev/sda
Welcome to GNU Parted! Type 'help' to view a list of commands.
(parted) print
Model: ATA ST9750420AS (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 750GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B
Partition Table: gpt

Number Start End Size File system Name Flags
 1 20.5kB 210MB 210MB fat32 EFI System Partition boot
 2 210MB 483GB 483GB hfs+ Untitled
 3 484GB 645GB 161GB ext4 Untitled
 4 645GB 666GB 21.5GB ext3 Apple_HFSX_Untitled_4
 5 666GB 750GB 83.8GB ext3 Apple_HFSX_Untitled_2

Here's the backup disk that triggers the problem:
$ sudo parted /dev/sdb
GNU Parted 2.3
Using /dev/sdb
Welcome to GNU Parted! Type 'help' to view a list of commands.
(parted) print
Model: WD Ext HDD 1021 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdb: 2000GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt

Number Start End Size File system Name Flags
 1 20.5kB 210MB 210MB fat32 EFI System Partition boot
 2 210MB 400GB 400GB hfsx BIGBACKUP
 3 400GB 2000GB 1600GB ext4

Just wanted to add this affects me too on Ubuntu 12.04 with grub-mount version 2.02~beta2-9ubuntu1.

The Precise Pangolin has reached end of life, so this bug will not be fixed for that release