[indiana-discuss] disappearance of SUNWgnu-libiconv and other issues with 111a

[Juergen Keil]

2009/5/3 Matt Ingenthron <ingenthr at cep.net>:
> Juergen Keil wrote:
>>
>> 2009/5/3 Matt Ingenthron <ingenthr at cep.net>:
>>
>>
>>>>
>>>> This assumes the upgrade from 2008.11 to build 111a did not
>>>> install the new grub bits, but the menu.lst file was rewritten
>>>> and now uses those zfs gang blocks, and the old grub cannot
>>>> read the file any more?   What kind of error is reported by the
>>>> grub console when you try a "cat /boot/grub/menu.lst" ?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> No error.  I see the file on the screen.  This is, of course, after I've
>>> done the findroot.
>>>
>>
>> Hmm, with a VirtualBox 2.2.2 guest install and build 111a,
>> I can enter the grub console and cat /boot/grub/menu.lst,
>> without having to use findroot!
>>
>
> Well, in my case, grub is loaded but presumably doesn't even know which of
> the partitions on the disk to operate with, right?  In your case, you've
> dropped to the grub menu after loading a number of parameters, including
> that there is this thing called rpool on a particular disk.
>
> Maybe I misunderstand what the findroot is doing and prematurely did the
> findroot.
>
> I tried just now and got "Error 25: Disk read error"

The partition where we should find the /boot/grub/menu.lst
file is patched into grub's stage2 binary, at offset 8, lengh 4 bytes.
Stage2 is the second sector in the Solaris fdisk partitoin.

http://src.opensolaris.org/source/xref/onnv/onnv-gate/usr/src/grub/grub-0.97/stage2/asm.S#88
(install_partition variable)


The menu.lst file exists in the rpool filesystem as
/rpool/boot/grub/menu.lst on your system, correct?

Note: the menu lst file is *not* read from
the boot/grub/menu.lst file in the
rpool/ROOT/opensolaris/ filesystem.



I think findroot should not be necessary to read
the menu.lst file.


>> Did you get an error before you used findroot? Which one?
>>
>
> I didn't even try.
>
>>
>> The other file that is loaded before the grub menu is displayed
>> is the file /boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz. IIRC a failure to load it
>> is not fatal and results in a grub menu without splashimage.
>> But, in the past there had been bugs in that area, e.g. 6775099
>> and 6779852.
>>
>> Does a cat on that splash.xpm.gz file work from grub console, too?
>>
>
> I can try that, but if it's failing and dropping to a grub> prompt because
> of that, there's a bug there.  :)
>
> I've just tried and yes, I can cat the splash.xpm.gz.  Any thoughts on how
> to get grub back in shape on this box?

I currently have no idea what's broken on your system...


When you boot and the system stops at the grub> console:
what is reported by grub's "root" command?  Does it report
that it uses a zfs root filesystem?

grub> root
 (hd0,0,a): Filesystem type is zfs, partition type 0xbf