[Bug 1560130] Re: Grub reports conflict in sector usage.

[Colin Watson]

Copying my response to ubuntu-users:

One of the peculiarities of this stuff (FlexNet and others) is that
uninstalling the proprietary software in question doesn't necessarily
actually remove all its remnants from the machine; from what we can
tell, this appears to be deliberate, in order to enforce things like
trial periods even across uninstall/install cycles.

http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~cjwatson/blog/windows-applications-making-grub2-unbootable.html may be of some help in understanding the background; that was part of my attempt to gather information in order to put in place what eventually
turned into the warning message you're seeing.

Note that this is *not* an error message; it is a warning.  An error would mean that there is some problem that couldn't be fixed
automatically.  But in this case, it's only a warning: GRUB is telling you that it worked around a problem.  You can ignore this message if you like.

The reason GRUB reports this message, even though inevitably not everyone will understand it or be able to do much with it (remember it's only written to the terminal, so it's not very intrusive) is that we have no other way to encourage people to complain to the vendors of the proprietary software in question that abuses bits of the boot area.  Their misbehaviour can have much more serious consequences if there is already a boot loader in place there when the proprietary software tries to write its licence tracking stuff there; GRUB actually has to implement error correction in assembly on its own boot code in order to
stop this rendering systems unbootable, which is a non-trivial maintenance cost!  We therefore need some kind of way to exert pressure on these vendors, even if it's small and indirect.

We can't really give much more information in the warning message,
because that would involve us putting in a lot of time researching the
quirks of proprietary software rather than developing free software.
The current situation seems like a reasonable compromise, because at
least we don't silently brush the problem under the carpet.

I hope that this message will turn up for future people searching for
this problem.

** Changed in: grub2 (Ubuntu)
       Status: New => Won't Fix

** Changed in: grub2 (Ubuntu)
     Assignee: (unassigned) => Colin Watson (cjwatson)

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1560130

Title:
  Grub reports conflict in sector usage.

Status in grub2 package in Ubuntu:
  Won't Fix

Bug description:
  I have just now removed some old kernels.  I did an update-grub, but 
    grub-install /dev/sda
  is reporting an odd error that I've never seen before:

  root at roisin:~# grub-install /dev/sda
  Installing for i386-pc platform.
  grub-install: warning: Sector 50 is already in use by the program `FlexNet'; avoiding it.  This software may cause boot or other problems in future.  Please ask its authors not to store data in the boot track.

  I do not know what FlexNet is.  Synaptic does not either.  This
  machine has stock Windows 7 and Xubuntu partitions only, and that's
  all it ever had (well, earlier Windows and Kubuntu, but a long time
  ago).

  At the very least, I'd like grub to report more information that might
  help me figure out what's going on.  Or is there some malware that it
  just discovered.  As it stands, I can't tell and don't know how to
  investigate.

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 15.10
  Package: grub-pc 2.02~beta2-29ubuntu0.3
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.2.0-34.39-generic 4.2.8-ckt4
  Uname: Linux 4.2.0-34-generic x86_64
  NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
  ApportVersion: 2.19.1-0ubuntu5
  Architecture: amd64
  CurrentDesktop: XFCE
  Date: Mon Mar 21 09:50:00 2016
  InstallationDate: Installed on 2015-01-16 (430 days ago)
  InstallationMedia: Xubuntu 14.04.1 LTS "Trusty Tahr" - Release amd64 (20140723)
  SourcePackage: grub2
  UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to wily on 2015-11-02 (140 days ago)

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