During boot, after grub selection screen, it appears "error: sparse file not allowed - Aborted. Press any key to exit."

[vimo]

After updating Xubuntu 23.10 to version 24.04, during boot, after selecting the Xubuntu version from the Grub screen, I get the error:

"error: sparse file not allowed
452: out of range pointer: 0x54b42620
Aborted. Press any key to exit".

Searching online it seems that this problem is linked to btrfs file systems, but I only have Ext4 file systems.

Some online guides suggest editing the /etc/default/grub file by placing entries
GRUB_SAVEDEFAULT=false
GRUB_DEFAULT=0

and then run "update-grub", but this solution didn't work.

When the error appears, pressing a key will boot the system normally.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 24.04
Package: ubuntu-release-upgrader-core 1:24.04.16
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 6.8.0-31.31-generic 6.8.1
Uname: Linux 6.8.0-31-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia_modeset nvidia
ApportVersion: 2.28.1-0ubuntu3
Architecture: amd64
CasperMD5CheckResult: unknown
CrashDB: ubuntu
CurrentDesktop: XFCE
Date: Sat May 11 11:42:18 2024
PackageArchitecture: all
SourcePackage: ubuntu-release-upgrader
Symptom: release-upgrade
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
modified.conffile..etc.default.apport:
 # set this to 0 to disable apport, or to 1 to enable it
 # you can temporarily override this with
 # sudo service apport start force_start=1
 enabled=0
mtime.conffile..etc.default.apport: 2015-03-14T11:03:48.280895
mtime.conffile..etc.update-manager.release-upgrades: 2024-05-08T16:33:52.778333

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Sam Gweon (gweon)]

I just upgraded my xubuntu box to 21.04 as well with a very similar problem. In my case the message is "error: sparse file not allowed" and a second later "Press any key to continue...". With no key stroke, it will time out and continue after a few seconds.

[vimo (vimot2)]

I solved the problem by reinstalling Grub on the same hard disk on which it was installed before.

grub-install /dev/sdX (where sdX is the hard drive on which grub was installed) and then
update-grub

[Sam Gweon (gweon)]

Thanks. The same steps (grub-install followed by update-grub) also eliminated the spurious message that I was getting.