Dapper images fail to boot

Recently I had the grub error 2 when I wanted to move my system from an old hard-disk to a new one.
It turned out recent mkfs will create the filesystem with inode size 256. This is only supported by grub since hardy (grub 0.97-29ubuntu19).

ubuntu-vm-builder on hardy uses inode size 128 both for a hardy and dapper vm.
vmbuilder on intrepid uses inode size 256 for a hardy vm.
My guess is vmbuilder on intrepid will also use inode size 256, which is not supported by dapper's grub. I guess you need to pass -I 128 to mkfs.ext2 to make it work. Unfortunately I couldn't find the right place to do that, so I could not test this yet.

Ah, that was not too hard.

In /usr/share/pyshared/VMBuilder/disk.py line 282/283, I changed:
    def mkfs_fstype(self):
        return { TYPE_EXT2: ['mkfs.ext2', '-F'], TYPE_EXT3: ['mkfs.ext3', '-F'], TYPE_XFS: ['mkfs.xfs'], TYPE_SWAP: ['mkswap'] }[self.type]

into:
    def mkfs_fstype(self):
        return { TYPE_EXT2: ['mkfs.ext2', '-F'], TYPE_EXT3: ['mkfs.ext3', '-I 128', '-F'], TYPE_XFS: ['mkfs.xfs'], TYPE_SWAP: ['mkswap'] }[self.type]

This made the dapper vm boot.
However, the kernel line in grub is not correct and needed to be edited during the boot:
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.15-52-amd64-server root=/dev/hd<bound method Disk.devletters of <VMBuilder.disk.Disk object at 0x7feee257c8d0>>1 ro quiet splash

Albert Damen wrote:
> However, the kernel line in grub is not correct and needed to be edited during the boot:
> kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.15-52-amd64-server root=/dev/hd<bound method Disk.devletters of <VMBuilder.disk.Disk object at 0x7feee257c8d0>>1 ro quiet splash

Thanks a lot to your insight, the first part of the bug is on its way to
be fixed and I have already fixed the second part a few days ago
(already comited to trunk).

rev 250 of trunk includes the fix for the inode.
I decided to use 128 bit inode for dapper, edgy and feisty, as gutsy and > seems to boot with 256 bit. Will run some test again on all suite to check.

Nick, I am surprised Gutsy works for you with inode size 256, given the grub change was first made in Hardy (and even Debian got that fix only in 0.97-30, Feb 2008). So I tested this and for me the Gutsy vm fails to boot with grub error 2, just like Dapper did.

Yep, it failed for me when I redid the tests, so now hardy is in 128bit
as well. Thanks.

This bug was fixed in the package vm-builder - 0.9-0ubuntu3

---------------
vm-builder (0.9-0ubuntu3) intrepid; urgency=low

  [ Johan Euphrosine ]
  * Fix exception when suite provided does not exist (LP: #281801)
    and provide unit test for it.

  [ Chuck Short ]
  * Added parameters required for EC2 plugin.
  * Use ec2_name instead of hostname when submitting an AMI.
  * Update xen_kernel_path and xen_ramdisk_path for intrepid.
  * Default to amazon kernels/ramdisk pairs for now.
  * Split out ec2 module into its own package. (LP: #284762)

  [ Nicolas Barcet ]
  * Error out if domain is undefined (LP: #280125)
  * Fix --dest so that it is actually used now (LP: #280091)
  * Fix -c handling, values are now used (LP: #279159)
  * Create /var/run/network to fix bug LP: #276365
  * Handle fsimage type vms (Xen) in fstab and (hopefully) libvirt (LP: #282109)
  * Components where not parsed correctly (LP: #283263)
  * preflight_check() was called twice in a row in vm.py for no aparant
    reasons
  * Change default suite to intrepid
  * Intrepid needs groot=uuid, else update-grub tries to outsmart us later on
    and it won't boot as it cannot guess the uuid right.
  * Couple fixes when calling devletters, which is a function
  * Double parenthesis removed in devicemap.tmpl
  * Added function isDomain to fix bug LP: #284746
  * Documented unusual conf name value in help to fix bug LP: #284614
  * Fixed a bug in set_defaults occuring on reading untyped value from the
    configuration file
  * Match ec2 vocabulary by adding option name and clarifying help
    (LP: #284765, LP: #285170, LP: #285165)
  * Added a check for xen hypervisor when ec2 is selected (LP: #285191)
  * Added checks for presence of bucket, access key and secret key for ec2
    (LP: #284757)
  * Older suite need 128 bit inode for grub to recognize os. Thanks to Albert
    Damen for the pointer (LP: #285093)
  * The libvirt plugin now errors out if used with something else than KVM, as
    nothing else is supported yet.
  * Write out disk info in vmware's .vmx, converting it to use template while
    at it (LP: #286487)
  * Add 'config.version = "8"' to vmware.tmpl to fix LP: #286531

  [ Mathias Gug ]
  * Fix --templates option.

  [ Soren Hansen ]
  * Create /var/{run,lock} on the root filesystem, just like d-i.

 -- Soren Hansen <email address hidden> Fri, 24 Oct 2008 13:15:23 +0200