grub-setup hangs on upgrade (natty)

I was able to get past the hang by starting in recovery mode.

Think I'm seeing the same problem. I ran

salisbury:~$ sudo dpkg --configure -a
Setting up grub-pc (1.99~20101210-1ubuntu2) ...

but it just hangs there indefinitely until I ^C.

Seems like it could be a critical issue, but just setting to high for now until the scope/severity is clearer. I definitely think this should be investigated prior to alpha-2, else we might have many unhappy upgraders on our hands.

salisbury:/srv/Source/HWSetup$ ps aux | grep grub
root 15694 0.0 0.1 5040 1588 pts/3 S 14:31 0:00 /bin/bash /var/lib/dpkg/info/grub-pc.postinst configure 1.99~20101126-1ubuntu3
root 15914 0.0 0.0 1896 592 pts/3 S 14:31 0:00 /bin/sh /usr/sbin/grub-install --force --no-floppy /dev/sda
root 16626 0.0 0.2 8088 4520 pts/3 D 14:31 0:00 /usr/sbin/grub-setup --force --directory=/boot/grub --device-map=/boot/grub/device.map /dev/sda
root 26994 0.0 0.5 11972 8340 pts/3 S+ 14:38 0:00 /usr/bin/perl -w /usr/share/debconf/frontend /var/lib/dpkg/info/grub-pc.postinst configure 1.99~20101126-1ubuntu3
root 27007 0.0 0.1 5040 1588 pts/3 S+ 14:38 0:00 /bin/bash /var/lib/dpkg/info/grub-pc.postinst configure 1.99~20101126-1ubuntu3
root 27217 0.0 0.0 1896 592 pts/3 S+ 14:38 0:00 /bin/sh /usr/sbin/grub-install --force --no-floppy /dev/sda
root 27910 0.1 0.2 8088 4520 pts/3 D+ 14:38 0:00 /usr/sbin/grub-setup --force --directory=/boot/grub --device-map=/boot/grub/device.map /dev/sda

I rebooted without issue and then re-ran sudo dpkg --configure -a and grub-pc updated itself normally.

Not sure how the system got into a state where grub-pc was hanging. I did have a lot of defunct processes hanging around for some reason.

Any hope of any debugging information, like an strace?

Also, if it can be reproduced, adding the --debug option to grub-install (in your cases it's currently being run as 'grub-install --force --no-floppy /dev/sda', so make that 'grub-install --debug --force --no-floppy /dev/sda') and providing the output would be helpful.

If it goes away when you try to reproduce it, I don't know if there's much I can do.

I tried reproducing it by downgrading the grub-pc and grub-common packages to 1.99~20101126-1ubuntu3 and then repeated the upgrade but it did not hang.

Anyway, if no one else is having the same issue maybe it's not important.

Unmilestoning until/unless we have some way to reproduce and debug this.

Saw same hang when upgrading from 10.04 to 10.10. Problem for me is the dialog for grub-pc configuration was behind the main update manager's window. Waiting on input. But I couldn't rearrange the windows to accept the grub-pc configuration question.

CPU usage was near 100% with no processes using large amounts of CPU. Sat like that for 2 or 3 hours with no progress.

What allowed me to continue was to set
System->Preferences->Appearance->Visual Effects
from None to Normal setting.

Once this was done I could rearrange the windows and click the button to accept grub-pc config.

A friend had the same problem and he aborted. I was able to recover one machine as others had after reboot. The other, grub-pc had to be un-installed and re-installed to clean up partial upgrade.

grub-setup seems to be trying to scan the empty space before the first paritition. In my case about 75 gb.
Also it's using about 1 gb ram causing my machine to thrash and grind to halt.

The fix for me was to create a partition at the beginning of the disk.

Easily reproducible, also.

Ah, that would make sense. In that case it's a bug in the embed-sectors branch.

This bug was fixed in the package grub2 - 1.99~rc1-6ubuntu1

---------------
grub2 (1.99~rc1-6ubuntu1) natty; urgency=low

  * Resynchronise with Debian. Remaining changes:
    - Adjust for default Ubuntu boot options ("quiet splash").
    - Default to hiding the menu; holding down Shift at boot will show it.
    - Set a monochromatic theme and an aubergine background for Ubuntu.
    - Apply Ubuntu GRUB Legacy changes to legacy update-grub script: title,
      recovery mode, quiet option, tweak how memtest86+ is displayed, and
      use UUIDs where appropriate.
    - Fix backslash-escaping in merge_debconf_into_conf.
    - Remove "GNU/Linux" from default distributor string.
    - Add crashkernel option.
    - Bypass menu unless other OSes are installed or Shift is pressed.
    - Allow Shift to interrupt 'sleep --interruptible'.
    - Reduce visual clutter in normal mode.
    - Remove verbose messages printed before reading configuration.
    - Suppress kernel/initrd progress messages, except in recovery mode.
    - Handle filesystems loop-mounted on file images.
    - Ignore devices loop-mounted from files in Linux grub.d scripts.
    - Show the boot menu if the previous boot failed.
    - Don't generate device.map during grub-install or grub-mkconfig.
    - Adjust upgrade version checks for Ubuntu.
    - Suppress "GRUB loading" message unless Shift is held down.
    - Adjust versions of grub-doc and grub-legacy-doc conflicts.
    - Fix LVM/RAID probing in the absence of /boot/grub/device.map.
    - Look for .mo files in /usr/share/locale-langpack first.
    - Make sure GRUB_TIMEOUT isn't quoted unnecessarily.
    - Build-depend on qemu-kvm rather than qemu-system for grub-pc tests.
    - Use qemu rather than qemu-system-i386.
    - Add a grub-rescue-efi-amd64 package.
    - On Wubi, don't ask for an install device, but just update wubildr
      using the diverted grub-install.
    - Enable lua from grub-extras.
    - Incorporate the bitop library into lua.
    - Add enum_pci function to grub module in lua.
    - Check hardware support before using gfxpayload=keep.
    - Build part_msdos and vfat into EFI boot images.
    - Put second and subsequent Linux menu entries in a submenu.
    - Preferred resolution detection for VBE.
    - Set vt.handoff=7 for smooth handoff to kernel graphical mode.
    - Build with gcc-4.5 on ppc64.
    - Add apport hook for ProblemType = 'Package'.

grub2 (1.99~rc1-6) unstable; urgency=low

  * Cherry-pick from upstream:
    - Fix crash when extending menu entry line beyond 79 characters (closes:
      #615893).
    - Account for FreeBSD module headers when calculating allocation size.
    - Switch back to framebuffer page zero before loading the kernel
      (thanks, Felix Kuehling).
  * Merge from Ubuntu:
    - If we're upgrading and /boot/grub/core.img doesn't exist, then don't
      ask where to install GRUB, since it probably means we're in some kind
      of specialised environment such as a live USB stick (LP: #591202).
    - Drop the default priority of grub2/linux_cmdline to medium. We only
      need to ask it if we're upgrading from GRUB Legacy and found an empty
      kopt in menu.lst (LP: #591202)....