Grub Error 17

Interestingly 0x17=23 hehe, but let's leave that aside. If you follow those guidelines, make sure to have at least backup copies of all changed files. Note that I use initramfs and a crypted partition with a containing lvm and therein root and swap.

Problem:
Even before the GRUB boot menu is displayed: Grub error 17
What I did was using the Windows built-in repartitioning tool to merge the second into the first partition, like here:

Previous Setup: 4 partitions:
1 - Vista
2 - Encrypted
3 - /boot
4 - encrypted lvm root and swap

Current Setup: (Changed with Vista) 3 partitions:
1 - Vista (merged purged Encrypted)
2 - /boot
3 - encrypted lvm root and swap

Okay, I booted from Debian Install/Rescue CD, mounted /boot and changed the device.map's root entry to match the now second instead of third partition. But that didn't do anything. (But should be done anyways)

My suspicion is that Windows Vista somehow messed up the MBR or the partition table. So I mounted all my partitions and chrooted into my system to have the grub command available. Then started grub and ran root (hd0,2) and setup (hd0) to reinstall grub into the MBR.

That gave me my boot menu back (and Windows Vista, but haven't tested it yet). Still I couldn't boot, due to other references to the previous partitions 3 and 4. So again in my chrooted system, I adapted the /etc/crypttab entry to refer to sda3 instead of sda4 and the fstab to refer to sda2 for /boot.

So the root system was setup to work, but the initrd files (I use initramfs) still contained the old settings. That was done with update-initramfs -k 2.6.23.1methos -u -t. I had to specify the kernel because I was still running from the rescue cd, so the version of the currently running kernel was not the one I wanted to create an initrd for (my normal current kernel). -u means update, change/replace the initrd. And -t means with force :) as it told me image altered, cannot update due to some reason.

So with the new initrd and reinstalled grub everything is working again. Wonderful!

LaTeX can be quite nasty, yes it can. Todays feature:

! Package textcomp Error: Symbol \textcurrency not provided by
(textcomp) font family ptm in TS1 encoding.
(textcomp) Default family used instead.

l.16 ...ment --- wikipedia{,} die freie enzyklopä
die,

Basically boils down to using the German Umlaut ae=ä in the bibliography file. As soon as I'll find a better solution than removing it, I will post it here to. For now: remove it!

Windows share mounting fails

After upgrading from kernel 2.6.22.9 to 2.6.23.1 without any config changes and CIFS support and all, suddenly when trying to mount the shares fails with (dmesg):

CIFS VFS: cifs_mount failed w/return code = -22

I suspect some kernel changes, probably related to my fstab style, where I had to add password=, though it seemed senseless to make it work in the first place:

//host/share /mnt/mountpoint cifs rw,username=guest,password=,auto,user 0 0

Anyways, aptitude install smbfs solves the problem immediately. Thats weird, as I am sure, that it was previously working without that package..

SSHFS mysteries

Problem:
'read: Connection reset by peer'
..when trying to establish an sshfs mount.

The solution becomes obvious when you try to manually connect with ssh:

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
@ WARNING: REMOTE HOST IDENTIFICATION HAS CHANGED! @
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
IT IS POSSIBLE THAT SOMEONE IS DOING SOMETHING NASTY!

the fingerprint sent from the host is different from the stored one. In my case due to an reinstallation on the host. In your case probably due to an Man-in-the-middle attach.

So go check the fingerprint of the public key on the host with the ssh-keygen -l -f YOUR_KEY_FILE command, delete the wrong entry from your known_hosts file and reconnect with ssh, then compare the fringerprint sent by the host with the one on the host and accept it.

First! first!

Not to confuse with the German First!

So what's this blog about? Getting the tech talk error-solution pair posts out of my main blog! The pedantic nature that I am, I can't help myself to document a personal problem solution, so if've outsourced that to here. Hopefully Google saves some guys some time by finding some solutions here.

So far, congratulations to myself :)