[Bug 1059231] Re: do-release-upgrade fails to configure properly Grub from Precise to Quantal.

[Jan van de Wijdeven]

I can confirm this bug for Kubuntu. Like the bug reporter the upgrade
was performed without any errors or warnings shown. After reboot, a grub
rescue prompt was shown:

error: file not found.
grub rescue> _

Luckily, I already have a usb rescue disc handy. A simple grub-install command solves the error. All my grub menu entries are restored and the system boots properly again.
I have experienced this error at least the last 4 times I upgraded my kubuntu installation. I upgraded 2 weeks ago from oneiric to precise, and last week from precise to quantal. 

Harddisk configuration
/dev/sda is a Maxtor drive on an addon pci card using a silicon image 3531 serial ata controller
/dev/sdb is a Samsung drive on an onboard Nvidia mcp51 serial ata controller

output of df
$ df
Filesystem     1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sdb9       19198676  17279464    943956  95% /
udev             1528136         4   1528132   1% /dev
tmpfs             616484       908    615576   1% /run
none                5120         0      5120   0% /run/lock
none             1541204        80   1541124   1% /run/shm
none              102400         0    102400   0% /run/user
/dev/sda3      243056000 220903612  22152388  91% /home
/dev/sdb8         960504     88060    823652  10% /boot
/dev/sdb5       10231392   6068784   4162608  60% /media/personal

Now that I look at this it strikes me as strange that my root and boot
dirs are on /dev/sdb, which is on the motherboard sata controller. Could
it be that the ubuntu-release-upgrader installs grub on the wrong drive?

output of some more stuff
/dev/disk/by-path$ ll
total 0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  9 nov 15 17:17 pci-0000:00:0e.0-scsi-0:0:0:0 -> ../../sdb
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 nov 15 17:17 pci-0000:00:0e.0-scsi-0:0:0:0-part1 -> ../../sdb1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 nov 15 17:17 pci-0000:00:0e.0-scsi-0:0:0:0-part2 -> ../../sdb2
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 nov 15 17:17 pci-0000:00:0e.0-scsi-0:0:0:0-part3 -> ../../sdb3
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 nov 15 17:17 pci-0000:00:0e.0-scsi-0:0:0:0-part5 -> ../../sdb5
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 nov 15 17:17 pci-0000:00:0e.0-scsi-0:0:0:0-part6 -> ../../sdb6
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 nov 15 17:17 pci-0000:00:0e.0-scsi-0:0:0:0-part7 -> ../../sdb7
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 nov 15 17:17 pci-0000:00:0e.0-scsi-0:0:0:0-part8 -> ../../sdb8
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 nov 15 17:17 pci-0000:00:0e.0-scsi-0:0:0:0-part9 -> ../../sdb9
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  9 nov 15 17:17 pci-0000:01:00.0-scsi-0:0:0:0 -> ../../sda
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 nov 15 17:17 pci-0000:01:00.0-scsi-0:0:0:0-part1 -> ../../sda1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 nov 15 17:17 pci-0000:01:00.0-scsi-0:0:0:0-part3 -> ../../sda3

$ lspci
<snip>
00:0e.0 IDE interface: NVIDIA Corporation MCP51 Serial ATA Controller (rev a1)
00:0f.0 IDE interface: NVIDIA Corporation MCP51 Serial ATA Controller (rev a1)
<snip>
01:00.0 Mass storage controller: Silicon Image, Inc. SiI 3531 [SATALink/SATARaid] Serial ATA Controller (rev 01)
<snip>

I added the files present in /var/log/dist-upgrade from the last upgrade
as requested by https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingUpdateManager.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1059231

Title:
  do-release-upgrade fails to configure properly Grub from Precise to
  Quantal.

Status in “ubuntu-release-upgrader” package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  Hi,

  I'm not entirely sure of where I should post this.  Please redirect this if I did wrong ☺
  As I was encountering a lot of problem with Precise, I thought it would be a good idea to send bug reports from Quantal rather than from Precise.  I thus decided to upgrade to Quantal.  I've got some minor problems, which I will explain in details after this first description of what did happened after the upgrading.

  “do-release-upgrade” seemed to have work well as it suggested me to restart my computer, with no obvious error shown.  So I did as it suggested me to do.
  Once I restarted, I only got a message from Grub stating this:
  error: file not found.
  grub rescue>
  Without any additional information (by the way, stating *which* file has not been found would be a non-neglectable improvement of Grub ☺), I tried some things, such as “help“, “reboot” or other classical command.  “ls” returns me a list of partitions, but I do not know what to do with those…  I'm searching on my live-CD ☺
  I do not know what happened, but I hope such error won't happen the day of the official release!

  By the way, my live-CD seems to work well:  if you want me to upload
  any useful file, just ask!

  Some problem I encountered meanwhile that maybe could help (or that should be reported to another software):
  → “upgrade-manager -d” refused to upgrade to Quantal because of “unknown error”.  It suggest to send bug report, so I did.
  → Maybe this is linked with the last one, but I encountered some problem of space in my “/” partition.  I thus removed some of my space-consuming software to be able to upgrade with “do-release-upgrade”
  → I got a lot of problem with Gnome-shell these last months.  Those problems seemed to be caused by contradictory old configuration files (my system fonts keeps changing, my mouse design too, and so did my keyboard mapping.  Each time such a “change” happened, the system froze for one or two seconds), maybe this is linked with this problem of upgrade…  Anyway, a program that is not able to choose between two configuration file, should choose one (at random if needed) for the entire session and do not change its mind.

  I'm working on fixing my computer on this little live-CD, but if
  meanwhile you need any further information, just ask:  it would be a
  shame that such a bug appears at the final release!

  Best,
  Martin.

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