grub minimal bash after first Maverick update

[BrunoWowk]

Affected x64 RC1 and affects x64 final release.
 After a fresh install all runs smoothly, on reboot grub works dual booting mine windows 7 x64. The problem is: after the first ubuntu sistem update, (done using the update assistent without further customizations, with an download of ~174 MB) upon reboot I get to grub minimal bash, unable to boot both ubuntu and windows. I'm running a HP Pavillion Dv4 notebook. Mine HD has 6 partitions: 3 for windows and 3 for ubuntu (reiserfs for root, ext4 for /home and swap).
Tried grub recovery procedure from livecd as described in < https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Grub2#Recover > with no sucess

the only message I get when trying to boot is:
 [ Minimal BASH-like line editing is supported. For the first word, TAB lists possible command completions. Anywhere else TAB lists possible device/file completions. ]

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

This should be reported as a bug against the package, not against the release notes; reassigning.

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

Colin, can you take a look at this? I'm not really sure where to start...

[BrunoWowk (bruno-wowk)]

Just reassuring that the trouble is with grub:
I reinstaled Maverick and did all the updates except grub-common and grub-pc. No problems booting this time.

If it helps, here are mine processor specs:
AMD Turion II Dual-Core M500, 2,2 GHz

uname -a output:
Linux BWowk-Notebook-PC 2.6.35-22-generic #33-Ubuntu SMP Sun Sep 19 20:32:27 UTC 2010 x86_64 GNU/Linux

[Wegi (cw-wegi)]

I had the exact same issue on upgrading from lucid to maverick.
I restored my system by booting with the 7.10 alternate disk in rescue mode, selected my drive as root and run grub-install /dev/sda.

My initially system was 7.10 or 8.04, I don't remember. The interessting thing is: the update to maverick asked me if I want to clean the system and suggested to remove some packages, I did as suggested and watched the console window. Every time it removed a kernel package it printed the remaining entries of the grub boot menu and at the end there was always an error telling something like:
blabla error /dev/sdd
/dev/sdd is an external usb disc. I ignored the error, but now I think that might was the source of the problem.

[Thomas Ibbotson (thomas-ibbotson)]

I'm not sure whether this is related, but on upgrading to Maverick I too had the issue of grub dropping to a minimal shell. It was coupled with a message about udevadm trigger not allowed when udev not configured. A workaround was to stop grub from using UUIDs. For me using Grub 2 this meant editing /etc/default/grub and setting "GRUB_DISABLE_LINUX_UUID=true". This prevents grub dropping to a shell, but it still waits for a timeout on the udev message before finally booting.

[nasos (nasos-i)]

I faced a similar problem, on ONE of two identical machines (4x2TB Hardware Raid 6 (using dedicated interface) with 4 AMD 6174 CPUs - 48 cores). Got it working by following the instructions in "Grub2 recovery" in here:
http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/grub-2.html#mozTocId842078
Had to modify some mounting steps, as I was letting ubuntu mount the HD in the /media/ folder using its UUID.

It looks like the critical step is the reconfiguration of grub-pc, as on one trial with just reinstalling grub2 did not work.

I wonder how it will behave in a future grub or kernel update.

[Pasi Tarhonen (pasi-tarhonen)]

I have similar situation here, GRUB drops to minimal bash state after first upgrade of clean Maverick i386 install to old HP VL420 with two external USB disks (250GB and 1000GB) and one internal 200GB disk. Maverick is installed to internal /dev/sda disk. As a workaround I booted this computer up again with SystemRescueCD. I tried also do update-grub with no success.

[Ken Turkowski (turk)]

I don't believe that this bug was reported 7 months ago, and is still not fixed. THIS IS CRITICAL!
I tried upgrading from Ubuntu 10.10 to 11.04, and it lost EVERYTHING.
To the user, IT WIPES OUT THE DISK. There is no longer any Ubuntu. No way to get my files. Just a black screen that says

   GNU GRUB version 1.98-1ubuntu5

   Minimal BASH-like line editing is supported.
   For the first word, TAB lists possible command completions.
   Anywhere else TAB lists possible device or file completions.
   grub>

In order to have Ubuntu again, I needed to reinstall Ubuntu 10.10, BUT ALL OF MY FILES ARE GONE.
How can you ship something like this? Ubuntu used to be so nice and reliable.
Now I have to warn people that Ubuntu 11.x has a bug or virus that loses all of their files.
For people using this in production, they cannot just erase the disk and start all over. They have years worth of work, and it all gets lost in an hour while performing an "upgrade". They will really thank you for THAT!

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

On Fri, May 20, 2011 at 06:22:06AM -0000, Ken Turkowski wrote:
> I don't believe that this bug was reported 7 months ago, and is still not fixed. THIS IS CRITICAL!
> I tried upgrading from Ubuntu 10.10 to 11.04, and it lost EVERYTHING.
> To the user, IT WIPES OUT THE DISK. There is no longer any Ubuntu. No way to get my files. Just a black screen that says
>
> GNU GRUB version 1.98-1ubuntu5
                      ^^^^^^^^^^^^^

This is the version of GRUB from Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, not from either 10.10
or 11.04. What's probably happened is that your system is misconfigured
to install the boot loader to the wrong place, and at some point it
ended up confused enough that it tried to load half of one version and
half of another, which meant it couldn't proceed. The fix is usually to
use https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2#METHOD%203%20-%20CHROOT with
a live CD to fix booting, and then 'sudo dpkg-reconfigure grub-pc' once
you're up and running and make sure that the boot disk is selected;
admittedly complicated but it should only be a problem for people with
relatively complex disk setups.

I don't believe that the underlying cause for this - the wrong data
being recorded by the grub-pc package about where the boot loader should
be installed - is still an issue in 10.10 and later. Unfortunately,
some old bugs have hung around on a few upgraded systems.

It's not clear to me that this is the same problem that afflicted the
original reporter of this bug. The upstream GRUB manual has some
general advice on this condition:

  http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub.html#GRUB-only-offers-a-rescue-shell

> In order to have Ubuntu again, I needed to reinstall Ubuntu 10.10, BUT ALL OF MY FILES ARE GONE.
> How can you ship something like this? Ubuntu used to be so nice and reliable.
> Now I have to warn people that Ubuntu 11.x has a bug or virus that loses all of their files.

While it is possible to reinstall Ubuntu without losing personal files,
you have to be really quite careful, and it is always sensible to take
full backups before reinstalling an operating system. It's easier in
Ubuntu 11.04, which comes with an "Upgrade Ubuntu <previous version> to
11.04" option which ensures that personal files are preserved.

I'm sorry for your loss of data, but it wasn't a direct result of this
bug.

[Azwan MD (gamep01nt)]

This happened to me after uograding fom 10.04 to 10.10. now im downgrading back to 10.04

[JC Hulce (soaringsky)]

This bug only affects Ubuntu 10.10, Maverick Meerkat. Maverick has reached end-of-life and is no longer supported, so I am closing this bug. Please upgrade to a newer version of Ubuntu.
More information here: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-announce/2012-April/000158.html