On 8/10/19 2:51 PM, Hendrik Boom wrote:
> 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.

ctrl-c?

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

If you have smartmontools installed, you can check:

smartctl -a /dev/whatever


> 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.

Create a partition at least 1MB in size with no filesystem on it.
(unformatted is the last choice in gparted) Give it a flag of bios_grub in
gparted or type ef02 in gdisk. When it comes to grub-install, grub will
know what to do with it.

Some howtos say it must be the first partition. I haven't found that to be
true. I've put it in the middle and at the end. It works.

fsmithred