Comment 50 for bug 576724

@ Steve Langasek,

I noticed in Maverick that upgrades of the packages "grub-common" and "grub-pc" on both the 21st and 23rd resulted in Maverick's grub 2 "grabbing" the mbr of /dev/sda with no user interaction whatsoever.

To be a bit more specific I multi-boot and currently I have Karmic's grub 2 in charge of booting, but the aforementioned package upgrades automatically resulted in Maverick's grub 2 installing to the mbr of /dev/sda.

I don't currently have Windows installed so I can't see what would happen if, for instance, I had a Windows mbr on /dev/sda and grub 2 on /dev/sdb. Does grub 2 now just automatically install to /dev/sda always?

As I think about this there is testing I can do such as installing lilo or legacy grub to various mbrs and then trying some test installs followed by updating the aforementioned packages.

Or maybe the grub 2 devs could briefly explain the new behavior?

I did start a thread at the forums to hopefully gather more info:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1516153

I realize this is a different issue (totally different behavior) so if this is a bug (and it may not be) I anticipate the possible need for a new bug report.

My time is seriously limited ATM but I will try my best to set aside whatever time is needed to address this issue. I'd think it's far from critical since Maverick is still in early alpha testing.