Ubuntu
grub package

upgrade from dapper to hardy fails due to old grub

Bug #212722 reported by spotter
8
This bug affects 1 person
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
grub (Ubuntu)
Expired
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

Binary package hint: grub

When one upgrades from dapper to hardy it seems one is stuck with a version of grub that is "too old" and can't boot the hardy kernel

I get an error of

"no setup signatures found"

when I try to boot.

It's conceivable that it's my fault (grub that boots says its 0.92, it could be a remnant of an older debian installation in a different partition, but I don't know).

It seems via google that its a known issue with "older versions of grub", so something to keep an eye out for, may need to force grub reinstallation.

Revision history for this message
Steve Langasek (vorlon) wrote :

Hi spotter,

Thank you for taking the time to report this issue and help to improve Ubuntu.

Dapper shipped with grub 0.97, so if you see 0.92 on boot, it did not come from dapper. This makes it exceedingly difficult for us to fix problematic boot blocks as part of the upgrade, because there's nothing currently in place to check for signatures on existing boot blocks, the problem can't be detected based on the old version of the grub package installed, and unconditionally overwriting boot blocks on upgrade also carries with it some risk of rendering the system unbootable.

So I'm afraid I don't see any way that we can address this problem for hardy. Suggestions (or patches!) are welcome.

Revision history for this message
spotter (spotter-yucs) wrote :

kernel's about 2.6.23 should perhaps check to see the version of grub. I'm not 100% sure how to do that, but I know the version is in it.

on my updates machine, I can grep grub in bootloader for 0.97, I assume it shouldn't be hard to verify that one has an appropriate version of grub when one goes to install hardy kernels.

If ubuntu never shipped an incompatible grub, then perhaps its not even an issue that has to be worried about beyond a check in the kernel warning the user (and as the user must be considered a "power user" of sorts if they have a non ubuntu shipped grub and able to fix it manually by running grub-install again manually and installing the newest grub into the mbr).

Albiet, this does seems to be an issue in that there can be bug in grub and updating grub doesn't really fix the part in the mbr (albiet it fixes any problem in portions stored on disk)

Revision history for this message
iheartubuntu (iheartubuntu) wrote :

I am having the same problem "no setup signature found". I have a 9.10 fresh install and now trying to run a 10.04 alpha 3 disc and getting the error message when trying to install 10.04. I will try the idea above.

Revision history for this message
Thomas Hotz (thotz-deactivatedaccount) wrote :

Any updates on this bug? Has this been fixed with grub 2 in Ubuntu 12.10? Thank you!

Changed in grub (Ubuntu):
status: New → Incomplete
Revision history for this message
Launchpad Janitor (janitor) wrote :

[Expired for grub (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

Changed in grub (Ubuntu):
status: Incomplete → Expired
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