Re: Trouble installing to partition: embedding is not possible

[Pascal Hambourg]

Le 25/07/2017 à 16:03, Xen a ecrit :
> Mistave schreef op 25-07-2017 14:19:
>
> > Unfortunately that doesn't work, and grub-install errors out with:
> > grub-install: warning: Attempting to install GRUB to a partitionless
> > disk or to a partition.  This is a BAD idea..
> > grub-install: error: embedding is not possible, but this is required
> > for RAID and LVM install.
> >
> > I can't find any useful information about this error online. Why is
> > this happening, is the dedicated partition (1 meg) too small? Out of
> > curiosity I tried installing grub to MBR (/dev/sdb) directly, and it
> > installed fine with no errors (don't worry, I had a backup of the
> > first 2048 disk sectors which I dd'ed back to the HDD later on).
>
> I'd love to know as well.

Unfortunately, grub-install does not allow to install the boot image 
and/or the core image in a raw unformatted partition. IMO it would be so 
useful, though.

> The easiest way is to create a small filesystem in that partition, I think.

Not any type of filesystem, because /boot/grub is encrypted so embedding 
the core image is required, and you need a filesystem which supports 
embedding.

AFAIK, GRUB supports embedding with only two filesystems : XFS and 
btrfs. Some readings in GRUB changelogs suggested that it may support 
embedding with the Minix filesystem, but I could not manage to get it to 
work. Unfortunately, XFS and btrfs are not designed for partition as 
small as 1 MiB. The smallest size I managed to create a btrfs filesystem 
on was 5 MiB (with no available space for files).


Otherwise, leave /boot/grub unencrypted. But again, 1 MiB is too small 
for /boot/grub contents.