[Bug 934614] Re: reinstall of precise breaks grub with invalid arch independent ELF magic

[John Johansen]

I have a machine (x120e) that I have recreated this problem on. Manually
installing grub-pc "solves" the issue here as well, as long as the bios
is set to emulate classif BIOS behavior.

I am willing to reinstall, and run tests etc, just let me know what if
you need anything.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/934614

Title:
  reinstall of precise breaks grub with invalid arch independent ELF
  magic

Status in “grub2” package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  I did an over the top install of precise without formatting the drive
  to preserve the home partition. I can now not boot the computer and
  can't reinstall grub.

  ubuntu at ubuntu:~$ mkdir target
  ubuntu at ubuntu:~$ sudo mount /dev/sda1 target
  ubuntu at ubuntu:~$ ls target/
  bin    etc             lib         lost+found  proc  selinux  usr
  boot   home            lib32       media       root  srv      var
  cdrom  initrd.img      lib64       mnt         run   sys      vmlinuz
  dev    initrd.img.old  libnss3.so  opt         sbin  tmp
  ubuntu at ubuntu:~$ sudo mount -o bind /proc target/proc
  ubuntu at ubuntu:~$ sudo mount -o bind /dev target/dev
  ubuntu at ubuntu:~$ sudo mount -o bind /sys target/sys
  ubuntu at ubuntu:~$ sudo chroot target
  root at ubuntu:/# grub-install /dev/sda
  Installation finished. No error reported.
  root at ubuntu:/# exit
  ubuntu at ubuntu:~$ 

  reboot, same error, grub rescue prompt with invalid arch independent
  ELF format.

  The computer was installed as 64bit 11.10, upgraded to 12.04 and
  updated frequently. I broke unity a bit and decided to try the full
  reinstall process from a live USB. The computer is a core i3 laptop,
  with a 320GB drive, default partitioning /dev/sda1 is big and all the
  data /dev/sda5 is swap. Installing precise 64bit from daily live CD
  image.

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