after upgrading from 10.04.1 (Server) and rebooting, grub error: "the symbol 'grub_xputs not found."

[janma]

after the upgrade of 10.04.1 (server) to 10.10 (installation aborted after an error in galery2 with "Upgrade succsefully") and the restart came the following
error:
The symbol 'grub_xputs' not found.
(grub)

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

I suspect that grub-pc's record of where you wanted GRUB to be installed was incorrect to start with.

Please show the output of 'sudo debconf-show grub-pc'.

[Clay Weber (claydoh)]

I had this on a Kubuntu 10.04 to 10.10 *upgrade*. On 10.04, grub was installed to my pata drive (which is set in bios to be the first boot device). I would think an upgrade would not actually perform a new grub installation.

My output of 'sudo debconf-show grub-pc' :

grub-pc/kopt_extracted: false
  grub2/kfreebsd_cmdline:
  grub2/device_map_regenerated:
* grub-pc/install_devices: /dev/disk/by-id/ata-TOSHIBA_MK2035GSS_97BVFDRTS
  grub-pc/postrm_purge_boot_grub: false
  grub-pc/install_devices_failed_upgrade: true
  grub-pc/disk_description:
* grub2/linux_cmdline:
  grub-pc/install_devices_empty: false
  grub2/kfreebsd_cmdline_default: quiet
  grub-pc/partition_description:
  grub-pc/install_devices_failed: false
  grub-pc/install_devices_disks_changed:
* grub2/linux_cmdline_default: quiet splash
  grub-pc/chainload_from_menu.lst: true
  grub-pc/hidden_timeout: false
  grub-pc/mixed_legacy_and_grub2: true
  grub-pc/timeout: 10

the toshiba is the sata drive

[Renaat (z-launchpad-renaatdebaene-fastmail-fm)]

Similar problem here. Upgrade from Ubuntu (not Kubuntu) 10.04 to 10.10, 64-bits edition.

There were no errors during the upgrade process, but after reboot, Grub entered a rescue shell with the message "the symbol 'grub_xputs' not found."

Using a SystemRescueCD with the alternate 64-bits kernel, it was possible to boot to the root file system (/dev/sda6) on the hard disk. From a text console, the command "sudo grub-install /dev/sda" fixed the problem.

Some extra info:
* motherboard: Intel DQ965GF
* drives: 1 DVD-writer on PATA, /dev/sr0, 1 hard disk on SATA, /dev/sda, 1 floppy drive
* filesystem: ext4 (has been converted from ext3 to ext4 on Ubuntu 10.04)

Here's the debconf output:
===
  grub2/kfreebsd_cmdline:
  grub2/device_map_regenerated:
* grub2/linux_cmdline:
  grub-pc/install_devices_empty: false
  grub-pc/install_devices_failed: false
* grub-pc/chainload_from_menu.lst: true
  grub-pc/hidden_timeout: false
  grub-pc/timeout: 10
  grub-pc/kopt_extracted: true
* grub-pc/install_devices: /dev/disk/by-id/ata-MAXTOR_STM3160211AS_6PT263X1-part6
  grub-pc/postrm_purge_boot_grub: false
  grub-pc/install_devices_failed_upgrade: true
  grub-pc/disk_description:
  grub2/kfreebsd_cmdline_default: quiet
  grub-pc/partition_description:
  grub-pc/install_devices_disks_changed:
* grub2/linux_cmdline_default: quiet splash
  grub-pc/mixed_legacy_and_grub2: true
===

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for grub2 (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[Stefan Lasiewski (stefanlasiewski)]

I am marking this as a duplicate of #609280, so that we can get more attention to fix this serious issue.