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. 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. 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?
Graham