grub 0.97 and 2.00 installed in VMs causes confusion

[TJ]

Using Ubuntu 12.04.2 Precise on amd64 with kvm_intel, libvirt and vmbuilder.

After building a VM for raring using:

$ sudo vmbuilder kvm ubuntu --flavour virtual --suite raring --arch i386 --hostname vm-ubuntu-raring-playpen --proxy http://10.254.251.1:3142 --libvirt qemu:///system --addpkg linux-image-generic --addpkg acpid

 I was trying to force the console to be text-mode by removing "splash", adding "nomodeset" and "GRUB_TERMINAL=console" to "/etc/default/grub" and then doing 'update-grub'. The changed settings weren't having any effect.

I found that "/boot/grub/grub.cfg" (from grub2) was missing. Further investigation showed "/boot/grub/menu.lst" (from grub 0.97) was present, but didn't reflect the changes I was making to "/etc/default/grub". Then I found:

$ dpkg-query -l '*grub*' | grep -v ^un
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name Version Architecture Description
+++-=================================-============================-============-===========================================================================
ii grub 0.97-29ubuntu66 i386 GRand Unified Bootloader (Legacy version)
ii grub-common 2.00-12ubuntu1 i386 GRand Unified Bootloader (common files)
rc grub-pc 2.00-12ubuntu1 i386 GRand Unified Bootloader, version 2 (PC/BIOS version)
ii grub-pc-bin 2.00-12ubuntu1 i386 GRand Unified Bootloader, version 2 (PC/BIOS binaries)

$ lsb_release -a && uname -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu Raring Ringtail (development branch)
Release: 13.04
Codename: raring
Linux vm-ubuntu-raring-playpen 3.8.0-7-generic #15-Ubuntu SMP Thu Feb 21 20:44:11 UTC 2013 i686 i686 i686 GNU/Linux

I had to purge "grub" then install "grub2" followed by running the grub to grub2 upgrade script:

sudo apt-get --purge remove grub
sudo apt-get install grub2
sudo /usr/sbin/upgrade-from-grub-legacy
sudo rm -f /boot/grub/menu.lst*

[Scott Moser (smoser)]

I've moved this to 'low' on vm-builder, and made it affect grub2 in ubuntu. Hopefully cjwatson can tell me if I'm wrong.
Generally, though, grub-pc and grub conflict with each other, so the state you got (with -pc uninstalled) is not terribly unreasonable.

fwiw, The ubuntu cloud images uses 'grub-legacy-ec2' to manage /boot/grub/menu.lst. Ie, if you really think you need that file managed, that is one solution. The other solution is to use drop grub 0.97

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[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.

[Marcus Tomlinson (marcustomlinson)]

This issue has sat incomplete for more than 60 days now. I'm going to close it as invalid. Please feel free re-open if this is still an issue for you. Thank you.