Re: Boot issue fixed between 2.02 and 2.04; what changed?

[James Cook]

On Thu, 7 Nov 2019 at 01:15, James Cook <address@hidden> wrote:
> First, some context:
>
> I'm hoping to find a minimal patch to Grub 2.02 to fix a boot issue on
> the the latest release of the NixOS distribution. Grub 2.04 fixes the
> issue, but some users had trouble with it, so backporting 2.04 might
> not be a good idea.
>
> I'm asking this in case someone can think of something obvious to try.
>
> The symptom:
>
> When I try to boot my laptop (Dell XPS 7390 Developer Edition) with a
> USB stick with Grub 2.02, the laptop freezes. Specifically, when I
> choose the USB stick from the BIOS, or use "chainloader
> .../efi/boot/bootx64.efi" and then "boot" from a working Grub
> installation, whatever is on the screen (the Dell logo, or the
> commands I typed into the first Grub, respectively) stays there, a
> text cursor appears in the upper-left corner, and the laptop's fan
> eventually turns on.
>
> The question:
>
> Any idea which change between 2.02 and 2.04 might have fixed this? If
> anyone could suggest, say, 6 likely changes I could try patching, I'd
> love to try them and see if one of them fixes the issue.
>
> James

A couple of links, mostly relevant to the NixOS side:

https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues/72936 is the NixOS issue
tracking my problem.

https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues/61718 is the reason why the
NixOS 19.09 release dosn't use Grub 2.04.