Invalid menu.lst file was created

[LukeKendall]

Over Sun 4th - Wed 7th I upgraded from Ubuntu 9.10 to 10.04. I chose the option "use the package-provider's menu.lst". It created a menu.lst that could not boot. The problem was that it consistently used invalid syntax for each "root" stanza, e.g.:

title Ubuntu 10.04.3 LTS, kernel 2.6.32-36-generic-pae
root /dev/sda6
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-36-generic-pae root=/dev/sda6 quiet
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-36-generic-pae
quiet

By editing the grub commandline from inside grub, to provide instead
root (hd0,5)
the system booted.

Later, when I edited menu.lst to correct the problem permanently, I found that every root line for each kernel used the Linux device name instead of the grub device syntax.

Sorry, I can't easily provide details (lsb_release -rd and update-manager versions) on the 9.10 system as I'm not running it anymore.
(If it's important to know, let me know, and I'll see if I can boot it up - I saved a copy of / onto another partition before doing the system upgrade.)

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
Package: update-manager 1:0.134.11.1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-36.79-generic-pae 2.6.32.46+drm33.20
Uname: Linux 2.6.32-36-generic-pae i686
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Architecture: i386
Date: Sun Dec 11 17:36:01 2011
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" - Release i386 (20091028.5)
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_AU:en
 LC_COLLATE=C
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_AU.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: update-manager

[LukeKendall (luke-zeta)]

I should add, if there is a way to test a grub menu.lst to find if it will certainly fail, that should be run as part of the menu.lst creation step. There are certain syntax errors, and semantic errors, which could be checked in advance.

Perhaps grub has such a facility - lilo used to - but if grub doesn't, IMO that means grub should get a bug report "cannot test for errors in grub configuration" i.e. there is no way to look before you leap for the most serious step in modifying your system, especially for non-expert users.

[LukeKendall (luke-zeta)]

I followed up the 10.04 installation a couple of days with another update, which grabbed kernel 2.6.32-37, and it tried to do the same again - a diff of my version versus the package-maintainer's version tried to provide root /dev/sda6 for every stanza, again, instead of (hd0,5). So it wasn't a one-off occurrence.

[dino99 (9d9)]

This version is no more supported