8 Jul
2022
8 Jul
'22
11:11 a.m.
Hi,
I held off posting this to the "announce" list because I don't
understand the problem nor fully how to avoid/fix it, but another
CentOS-using customer has today ended up unbootable through not
getting the warning so I think I better had.
Have a read of this:
https://mailman.bitfolk.com/mailman/hyperkitty/list/users@mailman.bitfolk.c…
Basically it seems at some point some CentOS update without notice
converts your grub.cfg to use "BLS" which is a thing that's Red Hat
specific and not available in upstream Grub. Since BitFolk uses
upstream Grub to boot your VMs, this leaves your VM unbootable.
There's info in that post on how to discover if this has been
enabled, and how to disable it, but it's unclear to me:
- what does it
- if it can actually be reverted once it's happened
So if you know more, please do let us know.
Cheers,
Andy
--
https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting
8 Jul
8 Jul
11:52 p.m.
Using:
for a in `rpm -qa `
do
rpm -q --scripts | grep -qi bls && echo $a
done
Gives both tuned (which has nothing really applicable) and grub2-tools
which does call: /sbin/grub2-switch-to-bls-cfg
That looks like the culprit, the man page for it says: "reconfigures
grub-mkconfig to use BLS-style config files"
Kamal.
On Fri, 8 Jul 2022 at 21:13, Andy Smith via BitFolk Users <
users(a)mailman.bitfolk.com> wrote:
Hi,
I held off posting this to the "announce" list because I don't
understand the problem nor fully how to avoid/fix it, but another
CentOS-using customer has today ended up unbootable through not
getting the warning so I think I better had.
Have a read of this:
https://mailman.bitfolk.com/mailman/hyperkitty/list/users@mailman.bitfolk.c…
Basically it seems at some point some CentOS update without notice
converts your grub.cfg to use "BLS" which is a thing that's Red Hat
specific and not available in upstream Grub. Since BitFolk uses
upstream Grub to boot your VMs, this leaves your VM unbootable.
There's info in that post on how to discover if this has been
enabled, and how to disable it, but it's unclear to me:
- what does it
- if it can actually be reverted once it's happened
So if you know more, please do let us know.
Cheers,
Andy
--
https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting
_______________________________________________
BitFolk Users mailing list <users(a)mailman.bitfolk.com>
You're subscribed as <shakerky(a)googlemail.com>
Unsubscribe: <
https://mailman.bitfolk.com/mailman/postorius/lists/users.mailman.bitfolk.c…
or send an email to
<users-leave(a)mailman.bitfolk.com>
9 Jul
9 Jul
12:31 a.m.
Hi Kamal,
On Sat, Jul 09, 2022 at 09:52:35AM +1000, Kamal Shaker via BitFolk Users wrote:
grub2-tools which does call:
/sbin/grub2-switch-to-bls-cfg
That looks like the culprit, the man page for it says: "reconfigures
grub-mkconfig to use BLS-style config files"
In the previous thread at:
https://mailman.bitfolk.com/mailman/hyperkitty/list/users@mailman.bitfolk.c…
we had got as far as working out that it's grub2-tools which
triggered this, but although you can disable this by putting
GRUB_ENABLE_BLSCFG=false
in /etc/default/grub and doing
# grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg
it's unclear to me whether the system continues then updating
grub.cfg on new kernel install or not.
I suppose my most pressing questions are:
- Does the above revert this configuration?
- Does it stay reverted or does every update of grub2-tools put
BLSCFG back even if GRUB_ENABLE_BLSCFG=false is set?
- Does grub.cfg keep getting updated properly on new kernel
installs?
Cheers,
Andy
--
https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting
10 Jul
10 Jul
6:55 a.m.
On Sat, 9 Jul 2022 at 10:31, Andy Smith via BitFolk Users <
users(a)mailman.bitfolk.com> wrote:
Hi Kamal,
On Sat, Jul 09, 2022 at 09:52:35AM +1000, Kamal Shaker via BitFolk Users
wrote:
Yes, sorry, read it too quickly.
grub2-tools which does call:
/sbin/grub2-switch-to-bls-cfg
That looks like the culprit, the man page for it says: "reconfigures
grub-mkconfig to use BLS-style config files"
In the previous thread at:
https://mailman.bitfolk.com/mailman/hyperkitty/list/users@mailman.bitfolk.c…
we had got as far as working out that it's grub2-tools which
triggered this, but although you can disable this by putting
GRUB_ENABLE_BLSCFG=false
in /etc/default/grub and doing
# grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg
it's unclear to me whether the system continues then updating
grub.cfg on new kernel install or not.
I suppose my most pressing questions are:
- Does the above revert this configuration?
Yes is does, but...
- Does it stay reverted or does every update of
grub2-tools put
BLSCFG back even if GRUB_ENABLE_BLSCFG=false is set?
It appears up or downgrading reverts this back to 'true' every time, which
is really quite annoying.
- Does grub.cfg keep getting updated properly on new
kernel
installs?
As long as the /etc/default/grub has the correct settings, yes. But see
above.
According to the rpmspec of grub2-tools, the file shouldn't be replaced *1:
%files
%config(noreplace) %ghost %attr(0644, root, root) %verify(not md5 size link
mtime) "/etc/default/grub"
That fles appears to be in all versions of the package with the same line.
So I suspect it's a bug somewhere, because there's a .rpmsave file:
[root@localhost default]# ll
total 12
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 322 Jul 10 02:23 grub
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 323 Jul 10 02:23 grub.rpmsave
I think it could be the %ghost directive, which may just be replacing the
file. *2
But that's about as far as I'm going to dig into this.
Kamal.
*1: https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~jw35/docs/rpm_config.html
*2: http://ftp.rpm.org/max-rpm/s1-rpm-inside-files-list-directives.html
2:02 p.m.
Hi Kamal,
On Sun, Jul 10, 2022 at 04:55:01PM +1000, Kamal Shaker via BitFolk Users wrote:
It appears up or downgrading [grub2-tools] reverts
[GRUB_ENABLE_BLCFG] back to 'true' every time, which is really
quite annoying.
Incredible. Thanks for digging into this.
Can a CentOS user confirm this is reported as a bug, and report it
if not?
I don't know what is the correct thing for BitFolk to do here. For
VMs to remain bootable the BLSCFG stuff must remain disabled. I
don't think BitFolk should start using Red Hat's fork of Grub (which
contains the BLSCFG support).
Jamie posted some script that reverts changes to /etc/default/grub
but I don't know if it's right to include that in a BitFolk install.
What do people think?
Thanks,
Andy
--
https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting
658
days inactive
660
days old
4 comments
2 participants
participants (2)
-
Andy Smith -
Kamal Shaker