mactel-support team mailing list archive

[Colin Watson <cjwatson@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

These wiki instructions are really odd.  I don't buy their
recommendation to convert back to MBR; we'd actually prefer people stay
with GPT if that's how their disk comes, and I expect that staying with
GPT would fix this problem.

grub-setup is just telling it how it is; the message is not a grub2 bug
in and of itself.  You should be able to reboot successfully (though
keep a live CD handy!), but the unreliability of blocklists means that
you may have to rerun grub-install more frequently than you otherwise
would - for example, after major filesystem rearrangements.
http://grub.enbug.org/BIOS_Boot_Partition has some further details here.

-- 
[Lucid] Upgrade of grub-pc: "Your embedding area is unusually small.  core.img won't fit in it."
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/515724
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Status in Mactel Support: New
Status in “grub2” package in Ubuntu: New

Bug description:
Binary package hint: grub2

Yesterday I installed Lucid on a MacBook Pro 5,4 (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MacBookPro5-4/Lucid), using the snapshot disc image. I removed Mac OS X and converted the disk to MBR like described here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MactelSupportTeam/AppleIntelInstallation#Single-Boot:%20Ubuntu%20Only
The installation went totally fine.

Today I did an aptitude full-upgrade, which pulled in a new grub-common and grub-pc. grub-pc generated this error:

Setting up grub-common (1.98~20100115-1ubuntu3) ...
Setting up grub-pc (1.98~20100115-1ubuntu3) ...
/usr/sbin/grub-setup: warn: Your embedding area is unusually small.  core.img won't fit in it.
/usr/sbin/grub-setup: warn: Embedding is not possible.  GRUB can only be installed in this setup by using blocklists.  However, blocklists are UNRELIABLE and its use is discouraged.
Installation finished. No error reported.
Generating grub.cfg ...
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-12-generic
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-12-generic
Found memtest86+ image: /boot/memtest86+.bin
done

I am now afraid to reboot.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
Date: Mon Feb  1 22:28:48 2010
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04 "Lucid Lynx" - Alpha amd64 (20100131)
NonfreeKernelModules: wl nvidia
Package: grub-pc 1.98~20100115-1ubuntu3
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_US.utf8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-12.16-generic
SourcePackage: grub2
Uname: Linux 2.6.32-12-generic x86_64