Upgrade from 64 bit 10.04 to 12.04 Fails

[WilliamColls]

I am trying to move from 10.04 to 12.04 using Software Upgrade link provided by KpackageManager.

The process starts correctly, as far as I can tell and ran to completion with one issue noted below, and requested a system restart. However, after machine shuts down, and attempts to reboot, I am left in a terminal screen with the message

Error: the symbol 'grub_xputs' not found
grub rescue >

I tried various things at the prompt most of which resulted in a "command not found" message.

ls gives me

(hd0) (hd0,5) (hd0,1)

which is correct (there are only two partitions on the disk)

During the upgrade process I got the following crash message:

KBuildSycoca crashed. PID 17984 Sig: 11 (Segmentation error)

I tied to save the information, but got various error messages. I'm not sure if did finally get the report saved.

I am doing this in a virtual machine. The host is Kubuntu 10.04 on 64 bit hardware. The guest is a basic 64 bit 10.04 install, and the guest is the system that I am trying to upgrade. I have tried this twice, with the same result both times.

Not sure where to go from here. Suggestions appreciated.

Thanks for your time.

William.

[doctordruidphd]

I suspect the problem you are running into here is that 10.x uses an older version of the grub boot loader than 12.04, and they are not compatible. I'm not exactly sure how to fix it, but what I would suggest is that you boot your VM into a live 12.04 CD, Assuming you system (inside the VM) is on /dev/sda1. you will need to install the new grub boot loader with:

sudo grub-install --boot-directory=/dev/sda1 /dev/sda

(you may need to mount the system on /dev/sda1 for this to work, I'm not sure about that)

then shutdown and reboot without the CD.

Just be VERY sure that you are doing all of this to the VM system, and not to your running host system, as it will surely kill your host system if you do this to it by mistake.

You might also want to wait for a second opinion before doing this.