Grub error on update

[Mumia W.]

Frank McCormick wrote:
> [...]
>    Can you let me see your menu.lst(s) ?
> 
> Thanks
> 
> Cheers

It's better for you to let Grub do most of the work in creating 
menu.lst's, but place Ubuntu's Grub in the "superblock" of its 
partition, so you'll have two installations of Grub; let's call them A 
and B.

"A" is in the MBR (e.g. /dev/sda) and contains two "important" boot 
stanzas: one for Debian (/dev/sda1) and one for chainloading (/dev/sda2).

"B" is in the superblock (bootsector) of /dev/sda2, and it contains one 
"important" boot stanza--the one for booting Ubuntu in /dev/sda2.

-----menu.lst for "A"--------
title		Debian on /dev/sda1
root		(hd0,0)
kernel		/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.18-6-486 root=/dev/sda1 ro
boot

title		Chainloading /dev/sda2 (probably Ubuntu)
rootnoverify	(hd0,1)
chainloader	+1
boot

-----menu.lst of "B"--------
title		Ubuntu on /dev/sda2
root		(hd0,1)
kernel		/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-19-generic root=/dev/sda2 ro
boot

----------------end-----------

Do not copy those directly! Let Grub make the menu.lst files and make 
appropriate adjustments. I could never have done it had not Grub made 
very good template files for me.

Installing Grub to the two different locations could get tricky.

Grub installation "A" might be put in the MBR like so:
grub-install --root-directory=/mounts/sda1 /dev/sda

And Grub installation "B" might be placed in /dev/sda2 like so:
grub-install /dev/sda2

However, I'm not sure about that. When I installed Ubuntu, I told the 
installer to install grub to /dev/sda2, so I never had to execute 
grub-install myself.

Others on the list can help you be sure you give the right options to 
grub-install. Although it sounds a little complicated, once it's set up 
you don't have to worry about the two Grub installations conflicting or 
clobbering each other. Good luck.