[Bug 1289977] Re: Ubuntu 14.04 Update breaks grub, resulting in "error: symbol 'grub_term_highlight_color' not found"

Sat Apr 26 11:28:11 UTC 2014

My guess is this is a regression in grub-mkconfig between
2.00-19ubuntu2.1 and 2.02~beta2-9.  Neither of the situations in Phillip
Susi's comment 64 applies to my case.  Maybe there are several different
possible causes for Grub2 not booting after an upgrade, and I'm not yet
convinced these are distinct bugs.

In the case of this Lenovo laptop, there's only one drive, no EFI, but
grub is installed to a partition.  It came with Windows on 3 partitions,
so I installed Lubuntu 13.04 to a logical partition, sda5; I later
enlarged and moved that partition (Partition table entries are not in
disk order) and upgraded to saucy (the only change I made to
/etc/default/grub was to comment out GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="").  Then today
I did the dist-upgrade through the Software Updater and there were no
visible errors, but on reboot I got the grub rescue prompt with error
"symbol 'grub_term_highlight_color' not found" and the same error in
response to "insmod linux".  The following warning was in the dist-
upgrade log:

Installing for i386-pc platform.
grub-install: warning: File system `ext2' doesn't support embedding.
grub-install: warning: Embedding is not possible.  GRUB can only be installed in this setup by using blocklists.  However, blocklists are UNRELIABLE and their use is discouraged..
Installation finished. No error reported.

parted -l output for the drive:

Model: ATA ST9250411AS (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 250GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos

Number  Start   End     Size    Type      File system  Flags
 1      1049kB  1259MB  1258MB  primary   ntfs         boot
 2      1259MB  91.3GB  90.0GB  primary   ntfs
 4      91.3GB  194GB   103GB   extended
 5      91.3GB  111GB   20.0GB  logical   ext4
 6      111GB   191GB   80.0GB  logical   ext4
 7      191GB   194GB   2999MB  logical
 3      239GB   250GB   11.0GB  primary   ntfs

chrooted to sda5 to run debconf-show grub-pc:
  grub-pc/timeout: 3
  grub2/device_map_regenerated:
  grub-pc/disk_description:
  grub-pc/install_devices_failed_upgrade: true
* grub-pc/install_devices: /dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST9250411AS_5VG7HNEE-part5
  grub2/linux_cmdline_default: splash quiet
  grub-pc/hidden_timeout: false
  grub-pc/mixed_legacy_and_grub2: true
  grub-pc/install_devices_disks_changed:
  grub2/kfreebsd_cmdline_default: quiet splash
  grub-pc/chainload_from_menu.lst: true
  grub-pc/postrm_purge_boot_grub: false
  grub-pc/partition_description:
  grub2/kfreebsd_cmdline:
  grub-pc/install_devices_empty: false
  grub-pc/kopt_extracted: false
  grub-pc/install_devices_failed: false
  grub2/linux_cmdline:

I booted from USB with 13.04 and did grub-install with "--root-
directory=/mnt/sda5" as in Sylvain's helpful comment 79 and could then
boot from sda (sometimes sda and sdb are reversed booting from USB).
However, on running dpkg-reconfigure grub-pc from within 14.04 as
Phillip suggested with the same settings (install to sda5), the problem
re-emerged on next boot.  A grub-install using 13.10 also seemed to fix
it.  After a grub-install in 14.04, I can no longer reproduce the grub
failure, and am not sure which of these conditions are relevant.  It
could be that steps to reproduce are: install grub 2.00 only to an ext4
partition; run the 2.02 update-grub on it and reboot.

What with this and niggles like losing lxkeymap and clipit (and synaptic
listing all origins) "Trusty" isn't living up to its name for me yet.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1289977

Title:
  Ubuntu 14.04 Update breaks grub, resulting in "error: symbol
  'grub_term_highlight_color' not found"

Status in Ubuntu Release Upgrader:
  New
Status in “grub2” package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  The update from 13.10 to 14.04 via update-manager broke grub for me,
  which resulted in the grub error:

  "symbol 'grub_term_highlight_color' not found"

  on startup.

  To fix the problem I had to boot to my persisting Ubuntu installation
  (e.g. using Super Grub Disk) and had to reinstall grub on my boot
  partition: "sudo grub-install --recheck /dev/sdx"

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 14.04
  Package: grub2-common 2.02~beta2-6
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.13.0-16.36-generic 3.13.5
  Uname: Linux 3.13.0-16-generic x86_64
  ApportVersion: 2.13.3-0ubuntu1
  Architecture: amd64
  CurrentDesktop: Unity
  Date: Sun Mar  9 10:36:45 2014
  EcryptfsInUse: Yes
  InstallationDate: Installed on 2013-12-10 (88 days ago)
  InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 13.10 "Saucy Salamander" - Release amd64 (20131016.1)
  ProcEnviron:
   LANGUAGE=de_DE
   PATH=(custom, no user)
   XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
   LANG=de_DE.UTF-8
   SHELL=/bin/bash
  SourcePackage: grub2
  UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to trusty on 2014-03-07 (2 days ago)

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