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

[Vincent Fortier]

Today I updated the kernel to 3.5.0-18-generic and resulted into a grub
rescue again with a message "ELF smaller than expected".

Again, booted using the live-cd (old 11.10 version), ensure to have
network access through the GUI then hit CTRL-ALT-F1 to get to a shell
then did the following (with /dev/pts this time..)

sudo -s
mount -t xfs /dev/sda3 /mnt
mount -o bind /dev /mnt/dev
mount -o bind /dev/pts /mnt/dev/pts
mount -o bind /proc /mnt/proc
mount -o bind /sys /mnt/sys
chroot /mnt

Reinstalling the linux* packages from the /var/cache/apt/archives did
not worked.  Neither did the reinstallation of the grub packages...

What finally worked:
apt-get purge grub-pc grub-common
rm -fr /boot/grub
apt-get update
apt-get install grub-pc grub-common
--->>> selected only my /dev/sda drive for installation, and not my / partition /dev/sda3

exit (from chroot)
umount everything properly (really usefull? not sure...)
umount /mnt/dev/pts
umount /mnt/sys
umount /mnt/proc
umount /mnt/dev
umount /mnt

reboot -f

and voilà!  finally got a working grub and being able to boot.  Hoping
that totally purging + stripping out the /boot/grub directory will solve
my problem once and for good...

-- 
You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu
Foundations Bugs, which is subscribed to grub2 in Ubuntu.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1051280

Title:
  reboot into grub prompt after system update

Status in “grub2” package in Ubuntu:
  New

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?!?!

To manage notifications about this bug go to:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/grub2/+bug/1051280/+subscriptions