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

[Terry Ellison]

@psusi, Philip,  Just responding to your comments

> I am not aware of any documentation since normally the installer takes
care of it.

So this tells me that from the PoV of the developers there is no
relevant user documentation on this which I read is a statement that it
is undocumented.

> Also it does rewrite the mbr any and all drives you selected from the
menu.

I am not doing a virgin install, and there is no such dialogue in the
upgrade process. But yes, I did specify this drive in the original
install at 12.10, three upgrades ago and it didn't update the MBR on
this upgrade, so this context has been lost somewhere along the line.

> As far as the number of people being hit, 89, out of the what? A
million people ...

This is flawed logic.  To put these numbers in perspective the
corresponding counts for the 3 "critical" grub issues are:

    #1024383: 77 in 21 months
    #1061255: 20 in 18 months
    #1183392: 6 in 11 months

So in two weeks since the 14.04 release, this issue (#1289977) at 89
reports is already at the top, but is still not rated as critical, or
from your wording as very important.  note that one reporter (#117)
stated: "This is a real bug as we have around 25% of users hit in a
corporate environment".  Luckily, most corporate and complex users (the
sort that will be hit by this) wait a few months before upgrading -- to
let such teething issues be fixed.  IMO, if this issue isn't addressed
soon then Ubuntu could face a shit-storm of bad publicity.

The respective counts for the 11 know issues detailed in the Release
Notes section on Boot, Installation and Upgrade are 13, 4, 2, 2, 6, 6 3,
5, 5, 5 and 12 users. This issue at 89 clearly tops this total of 63
especially as only 5 these cause loss total system functionality as
opposed to all 89 here.

It merits an explicit mention in the Release Notes, and it merits
treatment as a serious issue.

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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 “grub2” package in Ubuntu:
  Incomplete

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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