Update Manager fails to install GRUB update

[Ying Hu]

Binary package hint: update-manager

Critical:
For security update I received 6-17-2011, which included upgrade for GRUB to latest 1.98 ---
Update Manager freezes with a Debconf dialog box open, saying:
'Continue without installing GRUB?' with checkbox, Help button, and Forward button (Back button greyed out) displayed.
Forward button does not work. Help button brings up dialog warning of possible inability to reboot machine if you choose to continue without installing GRUB (which has not been checked yet). Box cannot be closed (no X up in corner). Update Manager cannot proceed. (Xorg, by way, is running very high, apparently because of this particular process.) Update Manager will only proceed if button choosing NOT to install GRUB is checked (which is an extravagant _FAIL_).

Further: Upon finish of the updating of other packages, I opened Synaptic, and re-installed the two GRUB packages, and this now worked fine (because I had now used an administrative password?). I have not yet checked to see if the machine will reboot without problems.

$ uname -a
2.6.35-28-generic #50-Ubuntu SMP x86_64 GNU/Linux
$ lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu 10.10
Release: 10.10
Fully updated previous to this 6-17-2011 update.

The GRUB update appeared to be one that should be done, but this security update problem interrupted and delayed my work this morning, and if an end-user didn't understand or didn't remember that the GRUB install had failed this would have led to MUCH frustration and time lost to trouble-shooting the next time a re-boot of the machine was attempted.

[Marc Deslauriers (mdeslaur)]

Is this happening inside a VM? Could it be a duplicate of bug #604335?