[bug #22138] GRUB partition size limitation undocumented

[John Klug]

URL:
  <http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?22138>

                 Summary: GRUB partition size limitation undocumented
                 Project: GNU GRUB
            Submitted by: klugja
            Submitted on: Sunday 01/27/2008 at 16:47
                Category: Documentation
                Severity: Major
                Priority: 5 - Normal
              Item Group: None
                  Status: None
                 Privacy: Public
             Assigned to: None
         Originator Name: John Klug
        Originator Email: address@hidden
             Open/Closed: Open
         Discussion Lock: Any
                 Release: 1.95
         Reproducibility: None
         Planned Release: 

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Details:

As far as I can tell no level of grub (0.97 included) will work with logical
2048 byte sector size with USB.  Shouldn't this be documented as a
limitation?

I have two 2GB USB flash drives.  One has 512 byte sector size, the other has
2048 byte sector sizes.

Here they were enumerated as /dev/sde (2048) and /dev/sdf (512):

# grub-install /dev/sdf
Installation finished. No error reported.
This is the contents of the device map /boot/grub/device.map.
Check if this is correct or not. If any of the lines is incorrect,
fix it and re-run the script `grub-install'.

(hd0)   /dev/sde
(hd1)   /dev/sdf
(chroot) livecd grub-1.95 # umount /dev/sdf1
(chroot) livecd grub-1.95 # mount /dev/sde1 /boot
(chroot) livecd grub-1.95 # grub-install /dev/sde
cannot find a GRUB drive for /dev/sde1.
Auto-detection of a filesystem module failed.
Please specify the module with the option `--modules' explicitly.

The OS does not need any special module to read the drive.

Here is what parted says about the drive that fails with grub (I have tried
ext2, FAT32, and reiserfs):

# parted /dev/sde unit co print unit s print
Warning: Device /dev/sde has a logical sector size of 2048.  Not all parts
of
GNU Parted support this at the moment, and the working code is HIGHLY
EXPERIMENTAL.

Model: CBM Flash Disk (scsi)
Disk /dev/sde: 2041MB
Sector size (logical/physical): 2048B/512B
Partition Table: msdos

Number  Start  End  Size  Type  File system  Flags

Model: CBM Flash Disk (scsi)
Disk /dev/sde: 996607s
Sector size (logical/physical): 2048B/512B
Partition Table: msdos


# parted /dev/sdf1 unit co print unit s print
Model: Unknown (unknown)
Disk /dev/sdf1: 33.6MB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: loop

Number  Start  End     Size    File system  Flags
 1      0.00B  33.6MB  33.6MB  ext2

Model: Unknown (unknown)
Disk /dev/sdf1: 65535s
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: loop

Number  Start  End     Size    File system  Flags
 1      0s     65534s  65535s  ext2





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