"failure writing to sector" error at boot with Advanced Format Disks
Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
grub2 (Ubuntu) |
Fix Released
|
High
|
Colin Watson | ||
Precise |
Fix Released
|
High
|
Colin Watson |
Bug Description
SRU justification:
[Impact] Unable to save GRUB environment on 4K-sector disks, which means the "recordfail" feature won't work there (i.e. the boot menu won't be forcibly displayed if the previous boot failed). In the case at hand, this resulted in the boot being interrupted with an error message without much harm being done; however, it just occurred to me that this could result in data corruption if /boot/grub/grubenv is situated in the first 1/8th of the disk, so we definitely need to fix this.
[Test Case] Install on an Advanced Format disk and make sure it boots without any error messages from GRUB.
[Regression Potential] Confined to the disk writing code, which is rarely used in GRUB; in 12.04, it's only used by the gptsync, parttool, and save_env commands, only save_env of which is widely used.
Original report follows:
Testing the 14.04 daily server images, I noticed a minor error popping up at boot time. See attached photo.
I call this 'minor' because the system will still boot by itself within 10 seconds or so of the error popping up.
This only seems to happen so far with Advanced Format disks when installed in EFI mode. I tried two different hard drives and got the same result.
Systems that are not equipped with Advanced Format disks but installed in EFI mode do not show this error.
Steps to reproduce:
1) Install 14.04 amd64 daily server build. Select the 'use entire disk' option to auto-partition the drive.
2) System needs to have an Advanced Format disk installed in it and needs to be booted in EFI mode.
Actual Results:
Installation finshes fine but upon reboot the "failure writing to sector" error pops up after the grub menu. System will boot on its own after about 10 seconds.
Expected Results:
Boot without the error message.
The disk layout on this drive according to Parted:
Model: SEAGATE ST91000640SS (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 1000GB
Partition Table: gpt
Number Start End Size File system Name Flags
1 1049kb 512MB 511MB boot
2 512MB 983GB 983GB
3 983GB 1000GB 17.2GB
Changed in dell-poweredge: | |
assignee: | nobody → Kent Baxley (kentb) |
importance: | Undecided → High |
status: | New → In Progress |
Changed in grub2 (Ubuntu Precise): | |
status: | Triaged → In Progress |
importance: | Medium → High |
Changed in grub2 (Ubuntu): | |
importance: | Medium → High |
description: | updated |
Changed in dell-poweredge: | |
status: | Fix Committed → Fix Released |
The error from the screenshot is:
error: failure writing sector 0x1a938000 to `hd1'.
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