karmic " 'grub_zalloc' not found " after update

[Walter_Wittel]

Binary package hint: grub

I just updated (Update Manager) a few minutes ago (~9:30pm GMT -8) and on reboot get thrown into the GRUB 2 shell with the following on the screen:

GRUB loading.
Welcome to GRUB! // note: inverse video
<blank line>
Entering rescue mode...
error: the symbol 'grub_zalloc' not found
grub rescue>

When I type help it replys "Unknown command 'help' <CR> Try 'help for usage'.

I found some info on http://grub.enbug.org/Manual#head-e045cd3fcb30ba800b68803eb5f2fb2aa63ed02c but not enough to fix anything, and the cat command doesn't work either. ls produces the following line:

(hd0) (hd0,6) (hd0,5) (hd0,1) (hd1) (hd1,7) (hd1,6) (hd1,5) (hd1,1) (hd2) (hd2,4) (hd2,3) (hd2,2) (hd2,1)

This is on an Asus eeepc 901 and I've been running karmic from a partition on an 8GB SD card (hit ESC at the BIOS POST and choose the SD card to get GRUB).

Need to get up early for work tomorrow so won't try anything else tonight. I can boot into my jaunty partition on the SSD and provide more info tomorrow night if someone can point me to stuff that would be helpful on the SD card / karmic partition. I can also make a karmic Alpha 3 USB boot from this machine if that would help with diagnostics or recovery (don't laugh, I know it may not be possible).

Let me know if more info is helpful. Thanks.

[ibotty (ibotty)]

this happens for me as well (on x86_64).

[Felix Zielcke (fzielcke)]

Am Dienstag, den 04.08.2009, 12:22 +0000 schrieb Launchpad Bug Tracker:
> You have been subscribed to a public bug:
>
> Binary package hint: grub
>
> I just updated (Update Manager) a few minutes ago (~9:30pm GMT -8) and
> on reboot get thrown into the GRUB 2 shell with the following on the
> screen:
>
> GRUB loading.
> Welcome to GRUB! // note: inverse video
> <blank line>
> Entering rescue mode...
> error: the symbol 'grub_zalloc' not found
> grub rescue>

Seems like the embed core.img is out of sync from /boot/grub.
Run grub-install again and make sure you use the disk your BIOS boots
from and that /boot is the one mounted you want to use.

> When I type help it replys "Unknown command 'help' <CR> Try 'help for
> usage'.
>
> I found some info on http://grub.enbug.org/Manual#head-
> e045cd3fcb30ba800b68803eb5f2fb2aa63ed02c but not enough to fix anything,
> and the cat command doesn't work either. ls produces the following line:

help and cat are in minicmd.mod which isn't by default included in the
embed core.img

--
Felix Zielcke
Proud Debian Maintainer

[ibotty (ibotty)]

looks as if our grub (the part (kern) in the mbr) does not have grub_zalloc . this was included on Thu, 2009-07-16 at 17:53 +0200 by Vladimir 'phcoder' Serbinenko. without this, grub cannot load any other modules: insmod /grub/help.mod at example will fail.

i will try to reinstall grub2 on the mbr. maybe this will just work out then :)

[bigdoby (bigdoby-gmail)]

to make grub2 to work again, i followed this tutorial
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelTeam/Grub2Testing (the part If You Messed
Up) and now it works again.
It's sucks to have to do this though!

R.

On Tue, Aug 4, 2009 at 1:50 PM, ibotty <email address hidden> wrote:

> looks as if our grub (the part (kern) in the mbr) does not have
> grub_zalloc . this was included on Thu, 2009-07-16 at 17:53 +0200 by
> Vladimir 'phcoder' Serbinenko. without this, grub cannot load any other
> modules: insmod /grub/help.mod at example will fail.
>
> i will try to reinstall grub2 on the mbr. maybe this will just work out
> then :)
>
> --
> karmic " 'grub_zalloc' not found " after update
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/408699
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

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[philinux (philcb)]

I have this. However, all the .mod files in /boot/grub have this for type=Amiga SoundTracker audio (audio/x-mod)
Opens with Movie Player. Very Odd.

[Walter_Wittel (wittelw)]

@bigdoby - thanks for the link! My Karmic partition is now bootable again

FWIW here is the version of grub after grub-install following the link instructions seems to be the latest in the repositories:

grub:
  Installed: (none)
  Candidate: 0.97-29ubuntu56
  Version table:
     0.97-29ubuntu56 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com karmic/main Packages

[Felix Zielcke (fzielcke)]

Am Mittwoch, den 05.08.2009, 05:30 +0000 schrieb Walter_Wittel:
> @bigdoby - thanks for the link! My Karmic partition is now bootable
> again
>
> FWIW here is the version of grub after grub-install following the link
> instructions seems to be the latest in the repositories:
>
> grub:
> Installed: (none)
> Candidate: 0.97-29ubuntu56
> Version table:
> 0.97-29ubuntu56 0
> 500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com karmic/main Packages
>

That's grub-legacy, which is totally different from grub2.
The grub2 package would be grub-pc.
Of course doestn't grub-legacy have this problem.

--
Felix Zielcke
Proud Debian Maintainer

[Walter_Wittel (wittelw)]

Sorry, it is grub2 that was having the problem (it is the new interface that now works again). Here is the version that is currently installed and working (after the fix link):

grub-pc:
  Installed: 1.96+20090725-1ubuntu1
  Candidate: 1.96+20090725-1ubuntu1
  Version table:
 *** 1.96+20090725-1ubuntu1 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com karmic/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

and also seems to be the latest.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

What does 'debconf-show grub-pc' say?

[Walter_Wittel (wittelw)]

It shows:

  grub-pc/linux_cmdline: fillme
  grub-pc/chainload_from_menu.lst: true
* grub-pc/install_devices: /dev/sdd

I checked and apt-cache policy still reports the same package, so I haven't pulled down anything new since reporting the bug (although I've been staying up to date with Update Manager).

[ichhaankur (n-arju-lx)]

I ran an update using

#sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get -y upgrade

And the grub was updated. After the update, I can't see windows on my grub menu- in fact there's no menu anymore. My machine boots straight into Ubuntu. I couldn't find /boot/grub/menu.lst either.

#cat /boot/grub/menu.lst
returns- cat: /boot/grub/menu.lst: No such file or directory

[ichhaankur (n-arju-lx)]

I'm running Karmic (2.6.31-5-generic #24-Ubuntu) on an x86.

[ichhaankur (n-arju-lx)]

I tried ESC while GRUB was loading, and voila, I was at the GRUB menu!

It's a little non-trivial for non-geek users.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 03:57:02PM -0000, ichhaankur wrote:
> I tried ESC while GRUB was loading, and voila, I was at the GRUB menu!
>
> It's a little non-trivial for non-geek users.

See bug 411584. This is unrelated to the original content of this bug.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

This bug was caused by the problem described in bug 496435, which is now fixed in Lucid.