Grub-update hanging, never completes

[utkjamie]

I have some pending upgrades, one of which includes kernel 2.6.32-22 but whenever the upgrade gets to running the update-grub command, it gets stuck on "Found memtest86+..."

Here's the actual output...

Generating grub.cfg ...
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-22-generic
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-22-generic
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-21-generic
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-21-generic
Found memtest86+ image: /memtest86+.bin

It's been hanging like this for hours today, preventing me from getting any of the pending upgrades. I've cancelled it several times, deleted the dpkg lock files and tried it again only to have it hang all over again.

How do I fix this problem?

(NOTE: I posted this on UbuntuForums.org yesterday but no one so much as acknowledged the problem, much less offered advice. Seems to be my experience with those forums for anything more advanced than newbie questions.)

[dibl]

Re: Grub-update hanging, never completes

I have not experienced such a hang, but I would try these, in a terminal window:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

sudo dpkg-reconfigure grub-pc

sudo update-grub

I'll cross my fingers ...

[utkjamie]

Re: Grub-update hanging, never completes

I hadn't even thought of using dist-upgrade, but that didn't work out for me. The dpkg-reconfigure option seemed to hang, too.

I'm not sure what to do at this point. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling grub yesterday but that didn't help either.

UPDATE...

Not sure if this is related, but I did notice last weekend that I can no longer boot into my Windows partition. Apparently the Grub boot info was written to my Windows partition during the upgrade to Lucid, damaging the boot info for that partition (not sure why it would do this instead of just use the previous settings). I very rarely ever boot into Windows, which is why it took me weeks to notice the problem. Is it possible this problem has something to do with that?

[dibl]

Re: Grub-update hanging, never completes

The apt-get dist-upgrade was just to make sure your version of grub and related packages is current and complete.

The dpkg-reconfigure option seemed to hang, too.


Not sure if this is related, but I did notice last weekend that I can no longer boot into my Windows partition. Apparently the Grub boot info was written to my Windows partition during the upgrade to Lucid, damaging the boot info for that partition (not sure why it would do this instead of just use the previous settings). I very rarely ever boot into Windows, which is why it took me weeks to notice the problem. Is it possible this problem has something to do with that?

Hmmmmmmm. What does

sudo dpkg --configure -a

tell you? If it is happy and takes you back to your user prompt, then there must be something haywire with the installation of grub on the MBR. And since you already reinstalled it .... I don' t know where that path leads.

[utkjamie]

Re: Grub-update hanging, never completes

Hmmmmmmm. What does

sudo dpkg --configure -a

tell you? If it is happy and takes you back to your user prompt, then there must be something haywire with the installation of grub on the MBR. And since you already reinstalled it .... I don' t know where that path leads.

I get nothing from that. I have to run it whenever I am forced to stop the hanging upgrade.

I can currently boot into Kubuntu without a problem. If I do a complete removal of grub and then install it (instead of a just a reinstall), do you foresee any potential problems?

[dibl]

Re: Grub-update hanging, never completes

It's a little like brain surgery on yourself ... :P

I guess if you have a known good 10.04 Live CD at hand, then you can apt-get remove --purge grub-pc from your installed system command line, then shutdown and reboot into the Live CD, and install grub from there onto the MBR of your hard drive. Be careful!

[utkjamie]

Re: Grub-update hanging, never completes

It's a little like brain surgery on yourself ... :P

I guess if you have a known good 10.04 Live CD at hand, then you can apt-get remove --purge grub-pc from your installed system command line, then shutdown and reboot into the Live CD, and install grub from there onto the MBR of your hard drive. Be careful!

That doesn't make me comfortable. I've been using Kubuntu since at least Edgy and the only time I've ever had to start over with a fresh install was when I bought a new hard drive in December. I'd hate for a problem like this (especially one that just seems to have come out of nowhere) to break my streak. The other (bigger) problem is that this is my primary work computer, so if this goes down...I'm screwed.

Anyone else have suggestions before I risk toasting my partition?

[Snowhog]

Re: Grub-update hanging, never completes

You could 'exclude' /memtest86+.bin from the process. Just remove the execute bit from the file /etc/grub.d/20_memtest86+

This means that the Memtest86+ won't be in your Grub Menu when you reboot. However, if this allows update-grub to finish, then you have confirmed that there is a problem associated with the /etc/grub.d/20_memtest86+ execution.

[skunk]

Re: Grub-update hanging, never completes

I Think the status messages are displayed after completion. Try removing the execute bit from /etc/grub.d/30_os-prober in case the problem is with the windows partitiion. If it finishes then you can try fix the windows partition.

[utkjamie]

Re: Grub-update hanging, never completes

I tried running boot_info_script055.sh to troubleshoot, but that froze up to. I was trying to work while dealing with this yesterday and never thought to run dmesg until this morning. That's when I noticed some screwy things with sdb1, which is a microSD card I had plugged into my laptop and forgotten about. I pulled that out, ran it again (with some dpkg --configure -a) and it seems to have worked!

I'll keep you posted if I run into more problems with it, but I think at this point the microSD was the culprit. It seems strange to me that grub would even bother with external storage devices, though.

Thanks for the help!

Now I just need to figure out how to get my Windows partition to boot again...