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

[Terry Ellison]

@psusi, Phillip, of course one of the first things that I did was to do
a dpkg-reconfigure grub-pc, but this didn't rewrite the MBR bootstrap or
give me any meaningful diagnostics to help me restore my system.  Where
are the configuration guidelines documented to set enable
reconfiguration of this package to "run grub-install /dev/sda after the
next upgrade"?  A URI would be nice.

I believe that there's clearly a logic fail in this grub-pc package. I
didn't do any nasty Q&Ds in the first  place;  I just did the obvious
setup process to dual-boot, because -- at least until 13.10 -- it
worked, out-of-the-box.  From the number of people being hit, it seems
that this failure is pretty systemic for a large class users who have
other than a single-disk, single-boot image configuration

If your assertion that the upgrade (of grub) "can't be validated in an
automatic way" is taken with the 14.04 team's decision to do a mandatory
grub update as part of the 13.10->14.04 upgrade, then you are also
implying that Ubuntu's position is that it is acceptable that the 14.04
upgrade for this class of users can trash their systems.  And this isn't
even documented as a caution in the 14.04 known issues.

In my mind, this position *isn't acceptable.*  What should we tell such
standard users in this class: are we just recommending that they should
move to another Linux distro, or shall we just continue to trash a
percentage of their PCs?

My own priority was to restore my laptop to a point where it was usable,
and where I didn't have to bootstrap through a system recovery USB,
leaving my main account with its encrypted home directory inaccessible
through normal login.    I trust that you guys, that is the Ubuntu grub2
developers, will fix this issue some time in the next six months.  And
if you don't then I have a work around that I will use again.  For my
own development work, I'll just stick with my contributions to PHP
internals -- À chacun son goût, neh?

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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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