3 Feb
2025
3 Feb
'25
7 p.m.
Andy Smith via BitFolk Users <users(a)mailman.bitfolk.com> writes:
Hi Bernard,
On Mon, Feb 03, 2025 at 11:20:11AM +0100, burban--- via BitFolk Users wrote:
Yes!
But next Debian release (Trixie) will catch up to
the Ubuntu version of
grub-pc. My disk has a msdos partition, which I understand may not
trigger the bug.
Firstly I would say to the extent there is a bug here, it's our fault
for going ahead with a GPT disk that doesn't have a bios_boot partition,
since it is required. In our defence, Ubuntu 24.04 did (initially) let
us!
However as you say, this doesn't apply to disks with an MBR or no
partition table at all, so I don't think you will be affected.
Nevertheless, what puzzles me is that everything
on my disk is empty
space:
[…]
Number Start (sector) End (sector) Size
Code Name
#
I'm guessing that you have a filesystem directly upon a disk device,
with no partitions at all. This is the way we used to do things many
years ago, so this VPS is probably quite old and has been upgraded in
place. If it got reinstalled it would get a single partition
in an MBR.
All the classical tools to manage disks (fdisk, cfdisk, parted, etc...)
implicitly assume there is a partition table. So I was missled to
believe it's mandatory for a correctly configured system. After digging
a bit the subject, it's indeed valid for grub to boot from a raw disk.
But without a partition table, the disk space is seen as empty, allowing
any of the above tools to offer you to format that "empty space".
Mike Zanker has a message in this thread which shows what kind of gdisk
output I was expecting.
I think that a valid partition type should be
created, to avoid possible
problems in the future.
Well, maybe. That will be quite tricky though. I don't see a
way that
could be done without shutting down and having some downtime. I could
probably come up with a way to do it without data loss, but with some
down time.
Fortunately I don't think there will be very many customers with a
layout like that.
I'd really rather wait until it becomes an issue but if you feel it
could be an issue for the Debian 13 release which I think is set for
around the middle of this year, I can do some tests nearer the time.
Don't worry. I am rarely in a rush to be an early upgrader, and I follow
the process closely. So when I will upgrade (more likely 2026) and if I
encounter trouble I will come back on this topic.
Thanks,
Andy
Sincerely.
--
Bernard