grub failed to update on Natty

[Murphy]

Binary package hint: grub

My last Natty update was few days ago.
I just updated my (previously) working Natty on MacBook Pro and the process was stuck during the grub update (the last lines displayed were the list of kernel found and memtest86).
Ctrl+C helped to stop the update but grub and new kernel 2.6.38-8 packages installation were not finished.
dpkg --configure -a was stuck too.

A reboot was a bad idea because grub doesn't load.

I managed to boot on a livecd and chroot.
dpkg --configure -a helped me finish the installation but grub displayed "This GPT partition label has no BIOS Boot Partition...".

I am now stuck because grub is not loading at boot and it won't reinstall (same GPT BBT error).

Is there any manual way to revert to a working boot/BBP/grub?

Thanks.

[Chad A Davis (chadadavis)]

It's difficult to say if this is a bug in grub, unless the bug is that grub hangs when re-installing the bootloader.

But, to see if it hangs again, you could try reinstalling grub after booting from a CD. If you're booting from the live CD, running

sudo grub-install /dev/sda

(assuming that is your one and only disk, which is generally the case on a MBP).
Or if you are booting from the 'alternate' CD, there is a menu option to reinstall grub. If the one doesn't work, try the other. And report if either one of them hang, or give you any other errors.
Also, if you could post your current partition layout, that might help someone debug this, e.g.

sudo parted -l

[Murphy (murphy2712+launchpad)]

I'm booting with the Natty beta2 livecd using chroot:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2#METHOD 3 - CHROOT

#grub-install /dev/sda
"/usr/sbin/grub-setup: warn: This GPT partition label has no BIOS Boot Partition; embedding won't be possible!.
/usr/sbin/grub-setup: warn: Embedding is not possible. GRUB can only be installed in this setup by using blocklists. However, blocklists are UNRELIABLE and their use is discouraged..
/usr/sbin/grub-setup: error: will not proceed with blocklists."

#parted -l
"Model: ATA TOSHIBA MK2555GS (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 250GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt

Number Start End Size File system Name Flags
 1 20.5kB 210MB 210MB fat32 EFI System Partition boot
 2 210MB 68.9GB 68.7GB hfs+ NotQuiteMaxDisk
 4 68.9GB 73.2GB 4295MB linux-swap(v1)
 3 125GB 250GB 125GB ext3

Error: /dev/sr0: unrecognised disk label"

2 is the Mac partition I can use to boot into MacOsX.
3 is the / Ubuntu partition.

[Marcus Tomlinson (marcustomlinson)]

This release of Ubuntu is no longer receiving maintenance updates. If this is still an issue on a maintained version of Ubuntu please let us know.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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