Grub problem with legacy boards.
Posted: Fri Jan 23, 2026 11:32 am
This was in today's -current changelog:
And just when I was thinking of moving to Grub before buying a new machine. This one is 8 years old. Good thing PV is keeping LILO and that legacy machines are still out there.....
Code: Select all
a/grub-2.14-x86_64-2.txz: Rebuilt.
Reverted two upstream commits to fix grub-install with legacy BIOS:
configure: Check linker for --image-base support.
configure: Print a more helpful error if autoconf-archive is not installed.
Thanks to Petri Kaukasoina.
Even with these reverts GRUB has grown in size, and the trick it uses to hide
in the post MBR gap is a bit brittle. I'm getting this error on my only
MBR/BIOS machine that's still in use here:
grub-install: warning: You have a short MBR gap and use advanced config. Please increase post-MBR gap..
grub-install: warning: grub-core/partmap/msdos.c:pc_partition_map_embed:406:your core.img is unusually large. It won't fit in the embedding area.
grub-install: error: embedding is not possible, but this is required for cross-disk install.
With grub-2.12, grub-install worked fine on this machine.
Clearly LILO won't be going anywhere. :-)