Re: Guix bios installation: Grub error: unknown filesystem

[adanskana@gmail.com]

Hi Ludo',

On 5/1/24 10:06 PM, Ludovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org> wrote:
> Hi Ada,
> 
> Ada Stevenson <adanskana@gmail.com> skribis:
> 
> > Basically, there is a compatibility issue regarding the ext4
> > filesystem features that GRUB 2.06 supports and the features that
> > `e2fsprogs@1.47.0` enables by default when creating your ext4
> > filesystem. When these features are enabled, it changes the structure
> > of the filesystem enough that GRUB can't recognise it properly and it
> > fails.
> >
> > To fix this, you will need to make sure you create your ext4
> > filesystem with the following features:
> > `mkfs.ext4 /dev/you-partition-here -O
> > has_journal,ext_attr,resize_inode,dir_index,filetype,needs_recovery,extent,flex_bg,sparse_super,large_file,huge_file,uninit_bg,dir_nlink,extra_isize`
> >
> > These are the features that worked for me. I had to do a lot of trial
> > and error, and I used `tune2fs -l` to see what features weren't
> > supported. The ones I can remember are the metadata_csum features, and
> > some other ones (they showed up as FEATURE_X when running `tune2fs` on
> > my Guix installation image, so I used a Gparted Live CD to get rid of
> > the features that weren't recognised by tune2fs).
> >
> > This should allow grub to recognise your filesystem during the
> > installation process. I think using a later version of grub would fix
> > this, but that hasn't happened yet. I think there's a patch to upgrade
> > it in `core-updates` somewhere, but I'm not sure.
> 
> Just recently I noticed that our installation tests had starting failing
> with that exact same ‘grub-install’ error that was mentioned:
> 
>    https://ci.guix.gnu.org/build/3708453/details
> 
> Cuirass says the culprit is in the 4003c60..daab3da, which indeed
> includes the e2fsprogs update to 1.47.0.
Okay, good to know!
> 
> Have you tried upgrading GRUB?  I see ‘guix refresh grub’ finds a new
> version.  If fixing the bug is what it takes, we should do that.
I might try doing this. It's a little scary though, updating the bootloader... What do you think would be the best way to test it? Should I create a VM and test through that? Or is there a way I can invoke the 'installation tests' that have been failing locally?
> 
> Thanks for the investigation!
No worries! I'm very glad I've been able to help; I'd love for this to be resolved :)
> 
> Ludo’.
> 
Thanks, 
Ada