Attention Dual/Multi-booters: Latest GRUB (2.06-2) disables os-prober

MiyoLinux · 2021-11-29 10:54:38

I received an update to grub on my two Ceres-based systems (version 2.06-2), and during the upgrade, it warned me that os-prober would no longer run. So that means that people with dual-boot or multi-boot computers will no longer be able to...

update-grub

...in order to get their other systems to show in the grub menu.

It did give a very vague clue that doesn't really help people if they don't know where to look.

C'mon devs, you can do better than that!

Anyway,

To fix this issue, you can open and edit the following file...

/etc/default/grub

...and add the following line...

GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=false

Save and close the file, then open a terminal and run an...

update-grub

Not sure if this has affected people running daedalus or not...since I don't have a daedalus system.

Altoid · 2021-11-29 11:13:07

Hello:

MiyoLinux wrote:

... received an update to grub ...
... os-prober would no longer run.
... people with dual-boot or multi-boot computers will no longer be able to...
update-grub
...in order to get their other systems to show in the grub menu.

Any idea as to what led to that?
Is it some systemd related thing?

That will probably break the grub-customizer application.

MiyoLinux wrote:

C'mon devs, you can do better than that!

Indeed ...
+100

MiyoLinux wrote:

... open and edit the following file...
/etc/default/grub
...and add the following line...
GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=false
Save and close the file, then open a terminal and run an...
update-grub

Thank you very much for the heads-up.

Best,

A.

rolfie · 2021-11-29 11:52:36

My experience is that os-prober never worked on efi systems. Valid for Stretch/ASCII, Buster/Beowulf, Bullseye/Chimaera.

rolfie

MiyoLinux · 2021-11-29 12:18:48

Altoid wrote:

Any idea as to what led to that?

Well, from what I've read, and depending on which story a user wants to believe...

1 - Gossip (the devs of grub and the devs of os-prober had some kind of nervous-jerkdown with each other)
I don't know if that's true, and I don't care.

2. Security (the devs of grub claim there's security issues with os-prober)
I don't know it that's true either. It's not explained in the following link. All they say is that os-prober has shortcomings, and...

lead to potentially dangerous use cases and borderline opening attack vectors.

...however, I can't find how the grub devs have discovered or documented why os-prober has those issues.

https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/grub. … c66f517666

blackhole · 2021-11-29 12:22:16

https://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manua … figuration

It is disabled by default since automatic and silent execution of os-prober, and creating boot entries based on that data, is a potential attack vector.

rolfie · 2021-11-29 12:24:03

Just tried it on my Chimaera box (Arch and Beowulf in parallel installations): Adding that line to /etc/default/grub does not make any difference on efi installations.

rolfie

Last edited by rolfie (2021-11-29 12:25:33)

hevidevi · 2021-11-29 12:38:35

Probably better off using grub2 to chainload other linux/unix OS's rather than rely on os-prober.

https://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manua … ading.html

https://wiki.debian.org/DualBoot/Windows10

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/GRUB2/Chainloading

MiyoLinux · 2021-11-29 12:41:12

rolfie wrote:

Just tried it on my Chimaera box (Arch and Beowulf in parallel installations): Adding that line to /etc/default/grub does not make any difference on efi installations.
rolfie

I don't use EFI.

I wonder why it doesn't work?

MiyoLinux · 2021-11-29 12:43:21

hevidevi wrote:

Probably better off using grub2 to chainload other linux/unix OS's rather than rely on os-prober.
https://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manua … ading.html
https://wiki.debian.org/DualBoot/Windows10
https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/GRUB2/Chainloading

That may be the ticket. That's what I had to do when adding OpenBSD or NetBSD.

hevidevi · 2021-11-29 12:55:48

Ive always had issues when using os-prober and much prefer to use the chainload method Miyo. Both grub2 and os-prober in my experience over the last few years was that they would clash with various OS's like for instance, archlinux with debian. I believe grub devs are probably correct in their analysis of os-prober.

pcalvert · 2021-12-01 03:21:06

rolfie wrote:

My experience is that os-prober never worked on efi systems. Valid for Stretch/ASCII, Buster/Beowulf, Bullseye/Chimaera.

What about a Jessie system that was upgraded to Stretch? Would the upgrade remove the working multi-boot menu?

sgage · 2021-12-01 12:51:17

rolfie wrote:

Just tried it on my Chimaera box (Arch and Beowulf in parallel installations): Adding that line to /etc/default/grub does not make any difference on efi installations.
rolfie

Works fine on my efi rig running either Daedalus or Ceres. Is it even an issue in Chimaera?

MiyoLinux · 2021-12-01 14:12:06

pcalvert wrote:

What about a Jessie system that was upgraded to Stretch? Would the upgrade remove the working multi-boot menu?

I just checked package versions of both Devuan and Debian.

The only systems that are using version 2.06 are Devuan Ceres and Debian Sid. Everything else is using a lower version number (for now). So, it shouldn't affect you as far as I can tell.

Last edited by MiyoLinux (2021-12-01 14:13:09)

pcalvert · 2021-12-01 23:01:55

MiyoLinux wrote:

The only systems that are using version 2.06 are Devuan Ceres and Debian Sid. Everything else is using a lower version number (for now). So, it shouldn't affect you as far as I can tell.

Thank-you. I need to upgrade that system soon, and having the multi-boot menu break is a problem that I don't need.

pcalvert · 2021-12-01 23:28:52

blackhole wrote:

https://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manua … figuration
It is disabled by default since automatic and silent execution of os-prober, and creating boot entries based on that data, is a potential attack vector.

It seems to me that there's a simple solution that will solve this problem -- ask the user to confirm that the information obtained from os-prober is correct. Or write the info to the appropriate config file, but commented out, along with a comment above it explaining why it's commented out and the importance of verifying that the information is correct before uncommenting it.

piledriver · 2023-02-27 05:11:44

I'm running on a Lenovo Thinkpad X260, dual core i7 32gb ram, 2TB nvme ssd, native UEFI from ~2018. Std Intel cpu w/integrated gfx.
New-ish to Devuan, but my Year of Linux on the Desktop was 1993...on my Amiga.

Ran into same issue, installed Daedalus from the live iso from Feb 2023...Grub entries for windows, Mint LMDE5 and Mageia disappeared upon Daedalus Kernel updates (obviously works somehow), although I initially booted Daedalus by running install-grub in Mageia, which has no issues with os-prober and dutifully created new entries for me.
The initial "grub install" in the Devuan live installer didn't actually install grub, which was more or less expected from the installers text.

LMDE also had no issues finding and creating entries for Daedalus. (in fact, both LDME5 and Mageia create UEFI boot menu entries as well as grub entries, including for Devuan)

poking around, the grub installation "appears" broken, as the usual grub binaries and scripts are mia-- i.e no "grub-install" "grub-mkconfig" etc.
I supposes its also possible they decided to rename everything without telling anyone, will have to figure out whats actually installed.
(I had the same gripe with grub2 that everyone had with systemd--- way too much code for a simple task. IIRC grub2 is larger that msdos 5)

Also tried grub2-install and other name variants, and needless to say grub-configurator didnt work due to no grub-install or grub-mkconfig.

Perhaps we should point out to the grub devs that grub also has "attack vector" issues, esp as it can boot non-signed images.
Anything that operates on bare metal has ~same potential issues.

Perhaps Poettering can contribute a bootloader extension to systemd that Microsoft will approve of? Wouldn't that be great ;-/

Have uncommented the disable comment for osprober in /etc/default/grub will try that edit prior to install this time to see if it works.

Last edited by piledriver (2023-02-27 05:46:45)

piledriver · 2023-02-27 06:42:37

As a follow up, re-enabling os-prober per Miyolinux in Daedalus live system prior to running the installer enables a fully populated grub config.
(and possibly a Debian entry in the UEFI menu, not sure what grub setup did that)

The "missing grub binaries" were just a path issue, had to do "su -" to get proper roots path, sudo and su aren't getting full path as usually seen, possibly intentional?

In the 2/2023 Daedalus /etc/default/grub "GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=false" line is simply commented out .

MiyoLinux wrote:

    ... open and edit the following file...
    /etc/default/grub
    ...and add the following line...

    GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=false

    Save and close the file, then open a terminal and run an...

    update-grub

Last edited by piledriver (2023-02-27 09:05:58)

Altoid · 2023-02-27 10:38:44

Hello:

piledriver wrote:

... "missing grub binaries" were just a path issue, had to do "su -" to get proper roots path ...

This has been so since the Beowulf release:

Devuan 3.1.0 Beowulf Release Notes wrote:

### What's new in this release
--- snip ---
Changes in su
- The behavior of su has changed. Use 'su -' to get root's path or use
the full path to commands if you use only 'su'.

- There are several ways to get the old behavior. The easiest is to
edit /etc/default/su to add the line:
ALWAYS_SET_PATH yes
See the following for more information:
https://www.debian.org/releases/buster/ … -variables
https://wiki.debian.org/NewInBuster
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugrepo … bug=905564

piledriver wrote:

... the grub installation "appears" broken, as the usual grub binaries and scripts are mia-- i.e no "grub-install" "grub-mkconfig" etc.

Could this be a bug?

The grub installer seems to ignore the new su behaviour as described in https://files.devuan.org/devuan_beowulf … _notes.txt.

Not running an efi box, so can't say much more about this.

Best,

A.

Last edited by Altoid (2023-02-27 11:03:34)

piledriver · 2023-02-28 05:49:14

I figured it was some form of operator error, but also figured it would be handy to know how to get a working multiboot grub menu including windows etc for new folks just kicking the tires. Did not test with bios setups.

Installed grub version is 2.06-8

Having no boot options generates panic for many folks, even though fixing it is usually relatively easy.

Last edited by piledriver (2023-02-28 05:53:08)

Altoid · 2023-02-28 19:41:29

Hello:

piledriver wrote:

... figured it was some form of operator error ...

So ...
It's a bug in the grub installer?

Best,

A.

The officially official Devuan Forum!

#1 2021-11-29 10:54:38

Attention Dual/Multi-booters: Latest GRUB (2.06-2) disables os-prober

#2 2021-11-29 11:13:07

Re: Attention Dual/Multi-booters: Latest GRUB (2.06-2) disables os-prober

#3 2021-11-29 11:52:36

Re: Attention Dual/Multi-booters: Latest GRUB (2.06-2) disables os-prober

#4 2021-11-29 12:18:48

Re: Attention Dual/Multi-booters: Latest GRUB (2.06-2) disables os-prober

#5 2021-11-29 12:22:16

Re: Attention Dual/Multi-booters: Latest GRUB (2.06-2) disables os-prober

#6 2021-11-29 12:24:03

Re: Attention Dual/Multi-booters: Latest GRUB (2.06-2) disables os-prober

#7 2021-11-29 12:38:35

Re: Attention Dual/Multi-booters: Latest GRUB (2.06-2) disables os-prober

#8 2021-11-29 12:41:12

Re: Attention Dual/Multi-booters: Latest GRUB (2.06-2) disables os-prober

#9 2021-11-29 12:43:21

Re: Attention Dual/Multi-booters: Latest GRUB (2.06-2) disables os-prober

#10 2021-11-29 12:55:48

Re: Attention Dual/Multi-booters: Latest GRUB (2.06-2) disables os-prober

#11 2021-12-01 03:21:06

Re: Attention Dual/Multi-booters: Latest GRUB (2.06-2) disables os-prober

#12 2021-12-01 12:51:17

Re: Attention Dual/Multi-booters: Latest GRUB (2.06-2) disables os-prober

#13 2021-12-01 14:12:06

Re: Attention Dual/Multi-booters: Latest GRUB (2.06-2) disables os-prober

#14 2021-12-01 23:01:55

Re: Attention Dual/Multi-booters: Latest GRUB (2.06-2) disables os-prober

#15 2021-12-01 23:28:52

Re: Attention Dual/Multi-booters: Latest GRUB (2.06-2) disables os-prober

#16 2023-02-27 05:11:44

Re: Attention Dual/Multi-booters: Latest GRUB (2.06-2) disables os-prober

#17 2023-02-27 06:42:37

Re: Attention Dual/Multi-booters: Latest GRUB (2.06-2) disables os-prober

#18 2023-02-27 10:38:44

Re: Attention Dual/Multi-booters: Latest GRUB (2.06-2) disables os-prober

#19 2023-02-28 05:49:14

Re: Attention Dual/Multi-booters: Latest GRUB (2.06-2) disables os-prober

#20 2023-02-28 19:41:29

Re: Attention Dual/Multi-booters: Latest GRUB (2.06-2) disables os-prober

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