RE: Error 2 - grub legacy (0.97) with newer ext3 (debian/ubuntu)

[Treutwein Bernhard]

hmm, nobody replied for a week, I regoogled and found 
the following:

http://fixunix.com/debian/336524-bug-463123-grub-does-not-support-256-byte-in
odes-ext3.html

which refers to a patch from the Fedora community:

http://cvs.fedora.redhat.com/viewcvs/devel/grub/grub-support-256byte-inode.pa
tch?view=markup
which in turn depends on a larger patch:
http://cvs.fedora.redhat.com/viewcvs/devel/grub/grub-fedora-9.patch?view=mark
up

I know, Grub legacy should fade away and the developers want to get
rid of it, but since it is still used a lot, and Grub 2 still lacks 
serious documentation (afaik, if I only have been unable to discover 
the documentation, I'll be glad for any pointer at least there is none
in grub-1.96.tar.gz), I would really appreciate, if these patches could 
be incorporated into the subversion tree ...

regards
--
  Bernhard Treutwein
  Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität
  Ref. IIIA3 Anwendungsentwicklung
  Martiusstr. 4
  80802 München
  Tel. 089 2180-2774
  Fax. 089 2180-992774
  Mobil. 0152-01549335
  e-mail: bernhard treutwein (at) verwaltung uni-muenchen de
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Treutwein Bernhard 
> Sent: Thursday, November 06, 2008 8:52 AM
> To: address@hidden
> Subject: Error 2 - grub legacy (0.97) with newer ext3 (debian/ubuntu) 
> 
> 
> I recently got an "error 2" after installing grub, when
> I tried to boot that system. Following up the problem
> made clear that grub legacy was not able to read the 
> newer/larger ext3 filesystem, although it recognized it.
> 
> Googling found http://forums.pcworld.co.nz/showthread.php?p=723490
> which I cite here:
> 
> [...]
> 
> Anyway, the new Ubuntu Intrepid release defaults to 
> using a 256 byte inode size for its ext3 file system 
> rather than the older 128 bytes used in Hardy and in 
> prior releases. Unfortunately the Grub version in Hardy 
> and before can't handle the larger inode size, so you 
> will typically get a Grub error 2 if you try to boot 
> one of the newer ext3 partitions.
> 
> [...]
> 
> My work around was to create a (small) boot partition 
> formatted as ext2, which worked. 
> 
> A quick glance at the source of fsys_ext2fs.c at
> http://svn.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/trunk/grub/stage2/fsys_ext2
fs.c?revision=8
59&root=grub&view=markup
convinced me that I neither know enough C nor do I understand 
the ex2/3/4 filesystem  adequately for fixing it ...

regards
--
  Bernhard Treutwein