Sorry for this post. There is trouble, but the details are all wrong.
I was upgrading a machine that was differet from the machine I thought
I was upgrading. Given that, it's no surprise that it appeared to be
upgrading ascii instead of beowulf, or that it had problems with gpt
disks -- there are gpt disks.

The real problem is that it seems to be unable to write to several
sectors at the start of device /dev/sdb. I have no idea why, but it
keeps retrying for hours and hours. Currently it's stuck trying to
write to sector 51. This is while doing something to grub in the
course of the upgrade.

Anyone know how I can

stop it from retrying? By now retrying is
useless.

Perhaps that disk is defective and I have to replace it.

As for not being able to stash grub onto a gpt disk, that *is* a
problem. Presumably I have to do something to it to make it
possible, and t make it possible to boot from the gpt disk, but I have
no idea what.


On Fri, Aug 09, 2019 at 02:16:10PM -0400, Hendrik Boom wrote:
> OK. Towards my usual ugrade, I'm told:
>
> Setting up libbasicusageenvironment1:amd64 (2016.11.28-1+deb9u2) ...
> Setting up mariadb-client-core-10.1 (10.1.38-0+deb9u1) ...
> Setting up grub-pc (2.02~beta3-5+deb9u1) ...
> Installing for i386-pc platform.
> grub-install: error: cannot write to `/dev/sdb': Input/output error.
> Installing for i386-pc platform.
> Installation finished. No error reported.
> Installing for i386-pc platform.
> grub-install: error: cannot write to `/dev/sdb': Input/output error.
> Installing for i386-pc platform.
> Installation finished. No error reported.
> Installing for i386-pc platform.
> grub-install: warning: this GPT partition label contains no BIOS Boot Partition; embedding won't be possible.
> grub-install: error: embedding is not possible, but this is required for RAID and LVM install.
>
> (and that's where it seems to have stalled)
>
> By the way, each time it told me "Installation finished. No error reported" it had actually complained it could not install on /dev/sdb
>
> At this point, it has failed to write to /dev/sdb twice, presumably because I have only one hard drive. When it fails the second time and tries again I tell it to insatall to dev/sda which does exist. It now complains about my GPT partition label. I don't have a GPT partition label. My machine is a bios machine. See:
>
> root@midwinter:~# fdisk -l /dev/sda
> Disk /dev/sda: 111.8 GiB, 120034123776 bytes, 234441648 sectors
> Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
> Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
> I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
> Disklabel type: dos
> Disk identifier: 0x1c229ec6
>

> Device     Boot     Start       End   Sectors  Size Id Type
> /dev/sda1            2048   1953791   1951744  953M 83 Linux
> /dev/sda2  *      1953792   3907583   1953792  954M 83 Linux
> /dev/sda3         3907584 119173119 115265536   55G 8e Linux LVM
> /dev/sda4       119175166 234440703 115265538   55G  5 Extended
> /dev/sda5       119175168 121126911   1951744  953M 82 Linux swap / Solaris
> /dev/sda6       121128960 141608959  20480000  9.8G 83 Linux
> root@midwinter:~#

>
> What gives?
>
> At this poiit I'm afraid to turn my machine off, lest it never start again.
>
> The machine is a Purism laptop, running Devuan beowulf. Oddly, when
> aptitude was updating, it kept mentioning ascii instead. But my
> /etc/apt/sources.lst is as follows:
>
> hendrik@midwinter:~$ cat /etc/apt/sources.list
> #
>
> # deb cdrom:[devuan_ascii_2.0.0_amd64_netinst]/ ascii main non-free
>
> #deb cdrom:[devuan_ascii_2.0.0_amd64_netinst]/ ascii main non-free
>
> deb http://pkgmaster.devuan.org/merged beowulf main non-free contrib
> #deb http://pkgmaster.devuan.org/merged beowulf main non-free contrib
> deb-src http://pkgmaster.devuan.org/merged beowulf main non-free contrib
>
> deb http://pkgmaster.devuan.org/merged beowulf-security main non-free contrib
> deb-src http://pkgmaster.devuan.org/merged beowulf-security main non-free contrib
>
> deb http://pkgmaster.devuan.org/merged beowulf-updates main non-free contrib
> deb-src http://pkgmaster.devuan.org/merged beowulf-updates main non-free contrib
>
> deb http://pkgmaster.devuan.org/merged beowulf-backports main non-free contrib
> deb-src http://pkgmaster.devuan.org/merged beowulf-backports main non-free contrib
> hendrik@midwinter:~$
>
>
> The only mentions of ascii have been commented out.
>
>
> -- hendrik
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