Re: address@hidden: Bug#243835: grub-install hangs with xfs root/boot]

[Yoshinori K. Okuji]

This sounds like a bug in XFS. Is it possible to get a stack trace from 
the grub shell by gdb to detect where it hangs up?

Okuji

On Thursday 15 April 2004 02:57, Jason Thomas wrote:
> ----- Forwarded message from Joey Hess <address@hidden> -----
>
> > Date: Wed, 14 Apr 2004 20:40:19 -0400
> > From: Joey Hess <address@hidden>
> > To: Debian Bug Tracking System <address@hidden>
> > Subject: Bug#243835: grub-install hangs with xfs root/boot
> >
> > Package: grub
> > Version: 0.93+cvs20031021-8
> > Severity: normal
> > Tags: d-i
> >
> > The debian installer can install a system with / or /boot on XFS.
> > When it tries to install grub on such a system, the grub-install
> > run hangs, seemingly forever. The last thing output is "Probing
> > devices to guess BIOS drives." The cpu is pegged too. This has been
> > reproduced on more than one machine, and I found something that
> > looked like the same problem on google. I've seen it with both the
> > 2.4.25 and 2.6.5 kernels.
> >
> > We have put a guard in d-i to deal with this, it warns users that
> > XFS /boot (or root) will not work with grub. This is not an ideal
> > solution, users want to use XFS for these partitions.
> >
> > Note that often, if the hanging grub is killed, grub-install can be
> > re-run and it does not hang, and works. I don't know why, but this
> > makes reproducing the problem annoying; the best way is to do a new
> > d-i install each time. :-/
> >
> > Ancedotally, people seem to think the problem happens if the XFS
> > filesystem is not synced to disk when grub accesses it directly.
> >
> > I've tried a few things. I tried adding 3 calls to sync before each
> > call to $grub_shell, but it still hangs. I remounted the filesystem
> > ro and then back to rw before calling grub-install, on the theory
> > this might make xfs put it in a consistent state, but no luck, it
> > still hung.
> >
> > It would be nice if this could be fixed, or even worked around
> > better than it currently is.
> >
> > --
> > see shy jo
>
> ----- End forwarded message -----