Bug#705636: grub-pc-bin: "/usr/sbin/grub-bios-setup: Not found" when using grub-install --target=i386-pc

[Daniel Kahn Gillmor]

Package: grub-pc-bin
Version: 2.00-13
Severity: normal

I'm running grub-efi-amd64 on this host ("alice"); but i want to be
able to install and work with the grub-pc bootloader as well, since i
use alice to prepare boot media for other machines.

So i have grub-pc-bin installed, alongside

I think i ought to be able to prepare a bootable non-EFI USB stick
(/dev/sdX) with something like:

parted /dev/sdX mktable msdos
parted /dev/sdX mkpart primary fat32 1MiB 32MiB
mkfs -t vfat /dev/sdX1
mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt
grub-install --target=i386-pc --root-directory=/mnt /dev/sdX

But that last step yields:

/usr/sbin/grub-bios-setup: Not found.

It looks like i have to add
--grub-setup=/usr/lib/grub/i386-pc/grub-bios-setup to the last command
to make it work properly.

Alternately, i can install grub-pc, but that rips out grub-efi,
potentially damaging the bootloader of alice itself.

grub-install ought to be able to figure out the location of
grub-bios-setup, if it is not in the $PATH, since it already knows the
--target. and that /usr/lib/grub/$TARGET/ is a plausible place for
this binary to exist.

Otherwise, silly admins like me will be tempted to install grub-pc for
/usr/sbin/grub-bios-setup (without realizing it's just a symlink to a
file they already have), and then have to deal with juggling the
active bootloader, which is a little sketchy.

--dkg

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 7.0
APT prefers testing
APT policy: (500, 'testing'), (200, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 3.8-trunk-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages grub-pc-bin depends on:
ii grub-common 2.00-13
ii libc6 2.13-38
ii libdevmapper1.02.1 2:1.02.74-7

grub-pc-bin recommends no packages.

Versions of packages grub-pc-bin suggests:
pn desktop-base <none>

-- debconf-show failed


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[Colin Watson]

Control: tag -1 pending

On Wed, Apr 17, 2013 at 03:04:03PM -0400, Daniel Kahn Gillmor wrote:
> grub-install ought to be able to figure out the location of
> grub-bios-setup, if it is not in the $PATH, since it already knows the
> --target. and that /usr/lib/grub/$TARGET/ is a plausible place for
> this binary to exist.

Thanks for the suggestion. Fixed for the next upload (2.00-14).

--
Colin Watson [cjwa...@debian.org]