Re: grub update and reinstallation
On 2020-08-01 12:23 +0100, Graham Seaman wrote:
> On 01/08/2020 07:50, Tom Dial wrote:
>> I have a laptop that became unbootable because
>> the initial loader failed to find a symbol (grub_calloc) and balked.
>> Like the one mentioned here, it uses legacy boot. One explanation has it
>> that this happened because the MBR and the remainder of grub were not
>> both updated or were updated with slightly incompatible data.
>>
>> One fix appears to be to reinstall grub using a rescue CD or another
>> system. That worked for me.
>
> My home server sits in my loft managing comms with the outside world;
> yesterday it overheated (not a surprise) and went down.
You should probably open the machine up and clean it. :-)
> On reboot
> after cooling it came back up with the grub_calloc problem, so like
> Tom I reinstalled after which it appears to be OK.
>
> BUT because I have no idea why the original problem occurred, or why a
> reinstall fixed the problem, I have no idea if this is a permanent
> fix, or if I have a system which is liable to fail to reboot again in
> the future. Does anyone know? It's a very simple single drive system
> with legacy boot.
In this case the error is quite unlikely to occur, I have no idea why it
happened for you in the first place.
> I run it with security updates on auto, and check
> for other updates manually once a week or so. Should I change this
> pattern for a while while possible grub problems are sorted upstream?
I would recommend to run "dpkg-reconfigure grub-pc". This should bring
up three dialogues, the last of which asks for the disk(s) to install grub
on. On your system this is most likely /dev/sda.
Or get the device name from the debconf database:
readlink -f $(debconf-show grub-pc 2>/dev/null | grep grub-pc/install_devices: | cut -d ':' -f2)
Cheers,
Sven
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