Strange Grub Error Message on dual boot Dell laptop

[Goh Lip]

On 04/27/2010 05:41 AM, NoOp wrote:

> When I booted this morning I got as far as:
>    symbol 'grub_puts' not found
>    grub-recover>
> Rather than trying to fix the issue in grub-recover (possible as I've
> done it on another system) I rebooted into a 10.04 liveCD and
> reinstalled grub to sdb. That worked fine.
>
> In the Dell cases; I still think that a good workaround (until the issue
> is properly fixed) might be to install grub2 to a separate partition.
> Maybe after Goh Lip get's his beauty rest he can have a look :-)

Noop, I am not sure if installing grub2 to a separate partition may 
solve this problem. After all, this is also set to mbr and the said 
problem is caused by corrupting mbr by the dell facility.

Just a comment, wondering whether it might be relevant in this case.
When installing grub (and OS) to a usb stick, the boot will always be 
from (hd0,1) while the root will be something else, like root=/dev/sdc1 
and this may change, say to sdd1, when put at another computer and even 
at same computer when plugging in other usb devices. But booting usually 
works (sometimes not) because grub2 searches for UUID=xxxxxxx. To make 
sure it always boot, at grub.cfg I remove all instances of "set 
root=(hd2,1)" (note grub sets to (hd2,1) when it should be (hd0,1) ) and 
provided theres a "search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set ......" below it. 
Also I remove (hd0,x) from (hd0,x)/boot/vmlinxxxxxxx  or 
(hd0,x)/boot/initrd.img if it is there.

In the dell facility case, I wonder, though I am not more than 50% sure, 
ie, possible but not likely, whether dell, by re-setting the recovery 
disk and the mbr, causes resetting like in the usb-stick situation...... 
Nah.....grub is gone from mbr, right? ..just thinking aloud here..... 
move along... nothing to see here...

Take care - Goh Lip

-- 
Life is a sexually transmitted disease with a 100% mortality rate.