Hi Andy I think I maybe affected by this now but did not have a direct message from you. Could you please send me the details so I can resolve. Thanks Paul ------ Original Message ------ From "Andy Smith via BitFolk Users" <users(a)mailman.bitfolk.com> To users(a)mailman.bitfolk.com Cc "Andy Smith" <andy(a)bitfolk.com> Date 2025/1/31 09:37:02 Subject [bitfolk] Re: Ubuntu 24.04 grub package update issue > On Thu, Jan 30, 2025 at 06:42:09PM +0000, Andy Smith via BitFolk Users wrote: > > But for now if you are affected I would just like you to get in touch > > with me off-list. > > In the mean time I managed to replicate it and fix it. I'm pretty sure > that everyone running Ubuntu 24.04 at BitFolk will experience it so I've > sent step-by-step instructions for fixing it to each of you as direct > email. > > As it's a one-off thing that affects relatively few people I don't think > it's worth putting the details on a wiki page but if you are affected > and somehow did not get my direct email, please let me know. > > Thanks, > Andy > > -- > https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting > > "I am the permanent milk monitor of all hobbies!" — Simon Quinlank

Hi Andy I'm in the same boat - I have two Bitfolk VM's on Ubuntu 24.04, but the panel said 22.04. Could you send me the email please. Thanks Phil On 01/02/2025 15:29, Andy Smith via BitFolk Users wrote: > Hi, > > I've now done that. > > We are not able to easily tell which Linux distribution you are running > so rely on self-reporting which is listed on the summary page of > <https://panel.bitfolk.com/> - I've only contacted people who have > listed Ubuntu 24.04 there. > > Thanks, > Andy

Did the upgrade to the 2.12-1ubuntu7.1 version of grub-pc in the evening of the 14th Jan. I don't remember a problem then, or since.

Partition table scan: MBR: protective BSD: not present APM: not present GPT: present Found valid GPT with protective MBR; using GPT. Disk /dev/xvda: 52428800 sectors, 25.0 GiB Sector size (logical/physical): 512/512 bytes Disk identifier (GUID): 1632EDC1-5D6E-4B1A-9DF5-D1C3D193B0F3 Partition table holds up to 128 entries Main partition table begins at sector 2 and ends at sector 33 First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 52428766 Partitions will be aligned on 2048-sector boundaries Total free space is 2014 sectors (1007.0 KiB) Number Start (sector) End (sector) Size Code Name 1 227328 52428766 24.9 GiB 8300 14 2048 10239 4.0 MiB EF02 15 10240 227327 106.0 MiB EF00

You are making me doubt my memory of what happened two and a half weeks ago - was there a complaint when it happened?? - but it's worked since and I can update and reboot fine.

Hi Phil, Oh dear. I may as well just post it here then, just in case I've missed anyone else. Here you go. Hi, You're receiving this email because a customer running several Ubuntu 24.04 VPSes contacted us today to report a problem upgrading their grub-pc package. Having looked into it, I think it is likely to affect all Ubuntu 24.04 VPSes at BitFolk (probably not any others elsewhere though), so I'm contacting you all about it. If you are currently running Ubuntu 24.04 on your BitFolk VPS I would urge you to run: $ sudo apt update $ sudo apt full-upgrade and see if you have any errors when it goes to apply a grub-pc upgrade from the last two weeks or so. (If you have any problems with other packages that is probably a You Problem. 😀) ## The Problem The error message you will see looks something like this: Setting up grub-pc (2.12-1ubuntu7.1) ... Installing for i386-pc platform. grub-install: warning: this GPT partition label contains no BIOS Boot Partition; embedding won't be possible. grub-install: warning: Embedding is not possible. GRUB can only be installed in this setup by using blocklists. However, blocklists are UNRELIABLE and their use is discouraged.. grub-install: error: will not proceed with blocklists. dpkg: error processing package grub-pc (--configure): installed grub-pc package post-installation script subprocess returned error exit status 1 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of grub-efi-amd64-signed: grub-efi-amd64-signed depends on grub-efi-amd64 | grub-pc; however: Package grub-efi-amd64 is not installed. Package grub-pc is not configured yet. If that happens — and I can't see how it won't, for all of you — then there's no need to panic as the only part of grub that we use to boot your VPS is the /boot/grub/grub.cfg file, which is still there and will still work. Not being able to do any more package updates is not acceptable though. The problem here is that we gave you a GPT disk but just left a bit of free space at the start (4MiB) for the bootloader, like you would with legacy MBR disks. This worked fine at the time of the 24.04 release but evidently a recent update has ended up with a grub that is more picky and demands a specific bios_boot partition on a GPT disk. ## The Fix Here are step by step instructions on how to fix this. They involve using parted on your actual running VPS disk, so if you make a typo maybe you destroy everything. If this worries you then maybe you want to email support(a)bitfolk.com and ask for a snapshot first, or even ask for me to do this for you, which I will do at no charge (I'll need an account with root access). Here goes: $ sudo parted /dev/xvda (parted) p Model: Xen Virtual Block Device (xvd) Disk /dev/xvda: 10.7GB Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B Partition Table: gpt Disk Flags: Number Start End Size File system Name Flags 1 4194kB 10.7GB 10.7GB ext4 (parted) unit s (parted) mkpart grub 34s 8191s Warning: The resulting partition is not properly aligned for best performance: 34s % 2048s != 0s Ignore/Cancel? Ignore (parted) set 2 bios_grub on (parted) p Model: Xen Virtual Block Device (xvd) Disk /dev/xvda: 20971520s Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B Partition Table: gpt Disk Flags: Number Start End Size File system Name Flags 2 34s 8191s 8158s grub bios_grub 1 8192s 20971486s 20963295s ext4 (parted) exit $ sudo partprobe /dev/xvda $ sudo apt full-upgrade Should now complete successfully. ### What the above does - Creates a new partition starting at the 34th sector and extending to sector 8191 (total 8158 sectors = 4176896 bytes = 4079KiB) This won't be block aligned, but it's read once per boot so not an issue. Just ignore that. - Sets the type of that partition to bios_grub. - Re-read partition table That's enough space for grub to embed itself when the package is upgraded. ## Permanent Fix We've already adjusted the installation images for Ubuntu 24.04 to have a bios_grub partition, but you really don't need to reinstall. After doing this you may still be left with grub-efi-amd64 and its dependencies which also won't upgrade because there is no EFI System Partition. It is safe to just remove these packages, though you do have to convince apt to let you do so. The command is: $ sudo apt --allow-remove-essential purge \ grub-efi-amd64-signed \ shim-signed \ efibootmgr \ grub-efi-amd64-bin Thanks, Andy On Sat, Feb 01, 2025 at 05:48:41PM +0000, Phil Driscoll via BitFolk Users wrote: > Hi Andy > > I'm in the same boat - I have two Bitfolk VM's on Ubuntu 24.04, but the > panel said 22.04. Could you send me the email please. > > Thanks > > Phil > > > On 01/02/2025 15:29, Andy Smith via BitFolk Users wrote: > > Hi, > > > > I've now done that. > > > > We are not able to easily tell which Linux distribution you are running > > so rely on self-reporting which is listed on the summary page of > > <https://panel.bitfolk.com/> - I've only contacted people who have > > listed Ubuntu 24.04 there. > > > > Thanks, > > Andy

Hi Bernard, On Mon, Feb 03, 2025 at 11:20:11AM +0100, burban--- via BitFolk Users wrote: 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. […] 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. 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.

Thanks, Andy

# gdisk -l /dev/xvda GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 1.0.9 Partition table scan: MBR: MBR only BSD: not present APM: not present GPT: not present *************************************************************** Found invalid GPT and valid MBR; converting MBR to GPT format in memory. *************************************************************** Warning! Secondary partition table overlaps the last partition by 33 blocks! You will need to delete this partition or resize it in another utility.

Disk /dev/xvda: 73400320 sectors, 35.0 GiB Sector size (logical/physical): 512/512 bytes Disk identifier (GUID): 8E9ED44B-E11E-4A56-BA6B-19D5F9FDC57E Partition table holds up to 128 entries Main partition table begins at sector 2 and ends at sector 33 First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 73400286 Partitions will be aligned on 2048-sector boundaries Total free space is 2014 sectors (1007.0 KiB) Number Start (sector) End (sector) Size Code Name 1 2048 73400319 35.0 GiB 8300 Linux filesystem Am I right in assuming that I'll have to apply the fix before I upgrade to Debian 13 later this year?

Hi Phil, Oh dear. I may as well just post it here then, just in case I've missed anyone else. Here you go. Hi, You're receiving this email because a customer running several Ubuntu 24.04 VPSes contacted us today to report a problem upgrading their grub-pc package. Having looked into it, I think it is likely to affect all Ubuntu 24.04 VPSes at BitFolk (probably not any others elsewhere though), so I'm contacting you all about it. If you are currently running Ubuntu 24.04 on your BitFolk VPS I would urge you to run: $ sudo apt update $ sudo apt full-upgrade and see if you have any errors when it goes to apply a grub-pc upgrade from the last two weeks or so. (If you have any problems with other packages that is probably a You Problem. 😀) ## The Problem The error message you will see looks something like this: Setting up grub-pc (2.12-1ubuntu7.1) ... Installing for i386-pc platform. grub-install: warning: this GPT partition label contains no BIOS Boot Partition; embedding won't be possible. grub-install: warning: Embedding is not possible. GRUB can only be installed in this setup by using blocklists. However, blocklists are UNRELIABLE and their use is discouraged.. grub-install: error: will not proceed with blocklists. dpkg: error processing package grub-pc (--configure): installed grub-pc package post-installation script subprocess returned error exit status 1 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of grub-efi-amd64-signed: grub-efi-amd64-signed depends on grub-efi-amd64 | grub-pc; however: Package grub-efi-amd64 is not installed. Package grub-pc is not configured yet. If that happens — and I can't see how it won't, for all of you — then there's no need to panic as the only part of grub that we use to boot your VPS is the /boot/grub/grub.cfg file, which is still there and will still work. Not being able to do any more package updates is not acceptable though. The problem here is that we gave you a GPT disk but just left a bit of free space at the start (4MiB) for the bootloader, like you would with legacy MBR disks. This worked fine at the time of the 24.04 release but evidently a recent update has ended up with a grub that is more picky and demands a specific bios_boot partition on a GPT disk. ## The Fix Here are step by step instructions on how to fix this. They involve using parted on your actual running VPS disk, so if you make a typo maybe you destroy everything. If this worries you then maybe you want to email support(a)bitfolk.com and ask for a snapshot first, or even ask for me to do this for you, which I will do at no charge (I'll need an account with root access). Here goes: $ sudo parted /dev/xvda (parted) p Model: Xen Virtual Block Device (xvd) Disk /dev/xvda: 10.7GB Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B Partition Table: gpt Disk Flags: Number Start End Size File system Name Flags 1 4194kB 10.7GB 10.7GB ext4 (parted) unit s (parted) mkpart grub 34s 8191s Warning: The resulting partition is not properly aligned for best performance: 34s % 2048s != 0s Ignore/Cancel? Ignore (parted) set 2 bios_grub on (parted) p Model: Xen Virtual Block Device (xvd) Disk /dev/xvda: 20971520s Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B Partition Table: gpt Disk Flags: Number Start End Size File system Name Flags 2 34s 8191s 8158s grub bios_grub 1 8192s 20971486s 20963295s ext4 (parted) exit $ sudo partprobe /dev/xvda $ sudo apt full-upgrade Should now complete successfully. ### What the above does - Creates a new partition starting at the 34th sector and extending to sector 8191 (total 8158 sectors = 4176896 bytes = 4079KiB) This won't be block aligned, but it's read once per boot so not an issue. Just ignore that. - Sets the type of that partition to bios_grub. - Re-read partition table That's enough space for grub to embed itself when the package is upgraded. ## Permanent Fix We've already adjusted the installation images for Ubuntu 24.04 to have a bios_grub partition, but you really don't need to reinstall. After doing this you may still be left with grub-efi-amd64 and its dependencies which also won't upgrade because there is no EFI System Partition. It is safe to just remove these packages, though you do have to convince apt to let you do so. The command is: $ sudo apt --allow-remove-essential purge \ grub-efi-amd64-signed \ shim-signed \ efibootmgr \ grub-efi-amd64-bin Thanks, Andy On Sat, Feb 01, 2025 at 05:48:41PM +0000, Phil Driscoll via BitFolk Users wrote: -- https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting _______________________________________________ BitFolk Users mailing list &lt;users(a)mailman.bitfolk.com&gt; You're subscribed as &lt;dave.mills(a)gmail.com&gt; Unsubscribe: < https://mailman.bitfolk.com/mailman/postorius/lists/users.mailman.bitfolk.c… or send an email to &lt;users-leave(a)mailman.bitfolk.com&gt;