Issue Report

Bug

Container Linux Version

Introduced in coreos/grub@a2599ab in 926.0.0.
Fixed in coreos/grub#53 in alpha 1744.0.0.

Environment

AMD64 booting via BIOS.

Expected Behavior

GRUB does not corrupt memory.

Actual Behavior

GRUB corrupts memory. Sometimes this causes boot failures.

Reproduction Steps

See #2284.

Other Information

Because GRUB is not updated after installation, OS upgrades will not fix the bug. The open question is whether the bug is likely to cause machines to break in the future. We have no evidence that this has happened so far, but we don't really know.

Further characterize the potential impact of the bug on existing systems, and consider adding a coreos-postinst hack to fix the broken GRUB on upgrade. This could be done by installing a fixed GRUB version (seems very risky) or by applying a binary patch to fix the incorrect offset (seems somewhat less risky).