Grub error 13: Invalid or unsupported executable format

Bug #365331 reported by sadicote
36
This bug affects 8 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
grub (Ubuntu)
Confirmed
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

I got this immediately after an update and reboot. Tried booting from live CD and using sudo grub-install /dev/sda1 but got a "device not found" message in the terminal. I am/was running Jaunty with occupies my entire 160 GB hdd. I think the Jaunty updater causes the problem when on ext4.

Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x556b556b

   Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 19128 153645628+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 19129 19457 2642692+ 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 19129 19457 2642661 82 Linux swap / Solaris
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$

Revision history for this message
sojourner (itsmealso2) wrote :

this occured to me after a fresh install of jaunty ( released version) with ext4 and then changing sources .lst to karmic and updating, all went well until I installed the 2.6.30-1 kernel , with that kernel I would get grub error 13 , with 2.6.28-11 the boot was ok , reinstalling grub from within karmic allowed me to boot the 30-x kernels , there are several reports of this in the karmic dev forum and reinstalling grub does not seem to work for everyone .

Revision history for this message
David Stansby (dstansby-deactivatedaccount) wrote :

I've had exactly the same experience of sojourner above.

Revision history for this message
Vish (vish) wrote :

This solved the problem for me, from > http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=6977997&postcount=5

Quote:
boot from the live medium and chroot into the Linux installation:

$ sudo mkdir /mnt/linux
$ sudo mount -t ext4 /dev/sda1 /mnt/linux
$ sudo mount -t proc proc /mnt/linux/proc
$ sudo mount -t sysfs sys /mnt/linux/sys
$ sudo mount -o bind /dev /mnt/linux/dev
$ sudo chroot /mnt/linux

If /boot is on a separate partition, this partition must also be mounted:

$ sudo mount -t ext4 /dev/sdaX /boot

Then, the following command should resolve the issue. :

$ sudo grub-install --recheck /dev/sda

Revision history for this message
Leo Milano (lmilano) wrote :

Same issue here. I upgraded from 8.04 to 9.04 on my eeepc. At some point, on 9.04, I switched to ext4. That would work fine. After that, there was a kernel upgrade that I install, and after reboot I got the dreaded grub error 13. Thankfully, the workaround reported by mac_v worked for me, too.

Revision history for this message
mathew (meta23) wrote :

Just hit this problem upgrading to 2.6.31 on a Karmic system, so it's still happening.

Selecting 2.6.28 from the menu allowed the system to boot. I then ran grub-install --recheck and rebooted again, and that killed it completely--I get "GRUB loading, please wait..." and then it hangs.

Revision history for this message
mathew (meta23) wrote :

Rebooted to 9.10 live CD, mounted my hard drives manually.

Ran grub-install --root-directory=/mnt/sdb1 /dev/sdb

That gave me a bunch of files in /mnt/sdb1/grub, but no grub.cfg. I did, however, have /mnt/sdb1/grub.d/*

Then did mount --bind /dev /mny/sdb1/dev && mount --bind /proc /dev/sdb1/proc && chroot /mnt/sdb1
and took a look around, and discovered I was running grub 1.x, but grub-common version was for grub 2.x. So I'm wondering if the problem is because upgraded systems are left with grub 1, but one or more recent upgrades result in a dependency on grub 2.

Installed grub-pc and ran update-grub2 /dev/sdb, which generated grub.cfg, though it gave an error "Cannot find list of partitions!"

Rebooted, and it died on "GRUB loading, please wait..." suggesting it was getting grub 1 from somewhere.

Finally got my system bootable again by burning a copy of the Ubuntu alt/recovery CD, booting that, using its menu option to launch a shell with /dev/sdb1 as root, then running grub-install and update-grub.

Revision history for this message
Fabien Tassin (fta) wrote :

confirmed.
Karmic, ext3 to ext4 migration a few weeks ago, no problem after a few reboot until a kernel update arrived.

Changed in grub (Ubuntu):
status: New → Confirmed
Revision history for this message
Jan Dvorak (snoutmate) wrote :

Same here, upgraded from jaunty to karmic (and ext3->ext4) week ago without problems, today after kernel update from 2.6.31-16 to 2.6.31-17 ended up with Invalid or unsupported executable format on boot - still was able to boot with 2.6.31-16

Revision history for this message
Alexander Sack (asac) wrote :

do you still have that broken kernel? please post output of ls -l /boot/

Revision history for this message
sadicote (mzsade) wrote :

Never had the problem since i switched to Mint (same kernels), have recently updated from 2.6.31-16 to 2.6.31-17 myself, so it's definitely something to do with the update manager.

Revision history for this message
Spang (hetkot) wrote :

I had this problem in Karmic x86, when upgrading to generic kernel 2.6.31-20.

Apparently kernel 2.6.31-19 was still bootable.

Just booting that and running

sudo grub-install --recheck /dev/sda

fixed it.

To post a comment you must log in.
This report contains Public information  
Everyone can see this information.

Other bug subscribers

Remote bug watches

Bug watches keep track of this bug in other bug trackers.