[Bug 1051280] Re: reboot into grub prompt after system update

[Kirk Anderson]

Vincent: you are NOT out of your mind :-)
Philip: this is real

I have had the exact same problem/symptoms for the last 3 days. It's
been killing me. This morning I finally discovered what was causing the
issue, although not the underlying problem.

I have been attempting to bring up two brand new HP DL370G6 servers this
week. I installed "ubuntu-12.04-server-amd64.iso" on both boxes with no
issue. First reboot was fine.  Then I did some package updates which
happened to pulldown a new kernel image and therefore required 'grub-
install' to rerun via apt-get.  All was still fine.

The problem, as it turns out, seems to be if one reboots using "reboot
-f" immediately after a 'grub-install', it somehow trashes something
that causes grub to fail on the next boot.  I too got the "ELF header
smaller than expected".

I checked checksums on the "/boot/grub/linux.mod" file many times and it
was always the same.  Even though it was that file which grub would
claim had the fouled up ELF header.  The file never changed.

I did rerun "dpk-reconfigure"many times and that fixed nothing.

After 3 days of playing around I found if I did the exact same steps
(grub-install /dev/sda; update-grub; reboot), everything was fine.  But
if I added the "-f" arg to that reboot, grub would fail to come up on
that next reboot.  I would then run the rescue CD, reinstall grub using
that, and then could reboot back to the OS.  Untill I did rebooted using
"reboot -f" again after I (or apt-get) got done doing a grub-install.

I'm just hoping this helps others having the same issue.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1051280

Title:
  reboot into grub prompt after system update

Status in “grub2” package in Ubuntu:
  Invalid

Bug description:
  Every time I do a system update, the alter reboot ends-up into a grub
  prompt like if grub configuration was not available.

  I first tought that this was only happening when upgrading the kernel
  but no, it does also happend at other times as well.  I don't know
  what package it is related to, I presume it's a grub2 problem invoke
  by another package needing to call update-grub but can't tell yet?

  It started doing this around 1-2 months ago durring early snapshots
  of 12.10 (upgraded from 12.04 to it).  This morning i noticed the
  upgrade to grub2 and i was hoping this would be fixed but no, it
  happend again.

  In order to fix the problem I use the live DVD from where I CTRL-ALT-F1 into command prompt then:
  I mount my / partition
  mount -t xfs /dev/sda3 /mnt

  mount everything else required for update-grub2:
  mount -o bind /dev /mnt/dev
  mount -o bind /proc /mnt/proc
  mount -o bind /sys /mnt/sys

  Then update grub:
  update-grub2

  Note that a the last 2-3 updates (of more than 100+ packages) I
  manually invoked update-grub2 right after, with no result beside
  getting a grub prompt at reboot.  Other cases (where I would not be
  invoking manual grub update after reboot) there would be a proper grub
  greeter with choices but the kernel would panic at boot time...
  although this kernel had not been updated in days?!?!

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