[Bug 1289977] Re: Ubuntu 14.04 Update breaks grub, resulting in "error: symbol 'grub_term_highlight_color' not found"

[Terry Ellison]

I am running  Ubuntu on a Lenovo  G770 laptop.  I left the original
Lenovo Win 7 config on the HDD (it's the only Windows boot image I have
left and I need it for contingency) -- albeit with a minimal pair of
partitions and configured dual boot pretty much as per the Trusty guide
though I did this back with 12.10.  I have upgraded Ubuntu 8 times, 3 on
this laptop, and this has been my only fail.  I use a standard grub-pc
install, and am a reasonably experienced sysadmin and developer.

@psusi, I won't bother enumerating all the false tries, and cascade
failures.  The underlying failure appears to be that the upgrade process
*silently* failed to install the new 2.02-beta2-9 MBR loader on my HDD,
and as you described above, the root failure was that the MBR and /boot
grub2 components were out of sync.  Given that part 0 starts at a block
2K block rather than block 39,  there is no reason why this MBR
bootstrap installation should have failed.  So a simple sudo grub-
install /dev/sda fixed this, and now both images are booting cleanly.

Some general comments:

*  LTS releases are supposed to be *stable*.  Why are we rolling out a
"beta2-9" version of anything? Especially if anything goes wrong it will
render the entire system unbootable; and the fix requires intimate
sysadmin knowledge so is not really user-workable.

*  As others have said, any upgrade process which can leave a
significant percentage of users system unusable is badly specified /
implemented. This sort of bug is "Critical", IMO and not "High".  At a
minimum the  upgrade process should carry out the necessary validation
checks *before* starting the upgrade and abort with an informational
error if there is going to be a failure.

*  The https://wiki.ubuntu.com/TrustyTahr/ReleaseNotes#Known_issues page
does not list this.  It should.

*  The user comments in this bugrep include a lot of misleading chaff.
A clearly defined diagnostic process and recovery process should be
documented by the release team and referenced in the this known issues
section.

Blaming the users for this happening is a mistake.  Mistakes happen both
by users and in development. The main goal here should be to move
forward in a positive manner, and to minimise the total impact.

-- 
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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1289977

Title:
  Ubuntu 14.04 Update breaks grub, resulting in "error: symbol
  'grub_term_highlight_color' not found"

Status in “grub2” package in Ubuntu:
  Incomplete

Bug description:
  The update from 13.10 to 14.04 via update-manager broke grub for me,
  which resulted in the grub error:

  "symbol 'grub_term_highlight_color' not found"

  on startup.

  To fix the problem I had to boot to my persisting Ubuntu installation
  (e.g. using Super Grub Disk) and had to reinstall grub on my boot
  partition: "sudo grub-install --recheck /dev/sdx"

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 14.04
  Package: grub2-common 2.02~beta2-6
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.13.0-16.36-generic 3.13.5
  Uname: Linux 3.13.0-16-generic x86_64
  ApportVersion: 2.13.3-0ubuntu1
  Architecture: amd64
  CurrentDesktop: Unity
  Date: Sun Mar  9 10:36:45 2014
  EcryptfsInUse: Yes
  InstallationDate: Installed on 2013-12-10 (88 days ago)
  InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 13.10 "Saucy Salamander" - Release amd64 (20131016.1)
  ProcEnviron:
   LANGUAGE=de_DE
   PATH=(custom, no user)
   XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
   LANG=de_DE.UTF-8
   SHELL=/bin/bash
  SourcePackage: grub2
  UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to trusty on 2014-03-07 (2 days ago)

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