[Libguestfs] guestfish and grub-install

[Richard W.M. Jones]

[CC'd to libguestfs mailing list, please send follow ups there]

On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 02:58:20PM +0200, Adrian Reber wrote:
> I am running guestfish on SL6 to install a few ubuntu VMs. I am now at
> the point where I try to install grub on the VMs. Should be easy with
> "grub-install". But it seems this installs the grub from the host
> machine. In my case that is grub 0.97 instead of the grub2 ubuntu wants.

This is true.

> Trying to run the grub-install from ubuntu in guestfish does also  not
> work:
> 
> ><fs> command "/usr/sbin/grub-install --root-directory=/ /dev/vda"
> libguestfs: error: command: df: Warning: cannot read table of mounted file systems: No such file or directory
> df: Warning: cannot read table of mounted file systems: No such file or directory
> Could not find device for //boot: Not found or not a block device.
> ><fs> 
> 
> Because only /dev/vda1 has been mounted on /.
> 
> Any ideas how I can install grub2 with guestfish?

You could try running the grub2 command (ie. using 'command').
However see the caveats at:

http://libguestfs.org/guestfs.3.html#running_commands
http://libguestfs.org/guestfs.3.html#security

The situation is further confusing because grub2 is not a universally
agreed upon upgrade to grub (Fedora is still using grub and won't
update to grub2 any time soon).

Anyhow, patches welcome if you want to fix the API.

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones
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