[Bug 1848892] Re: "error: Unknown TPM error." after upgrading to grub 2.04

[Adam Conrad]

Hello Stefan, or anyone else affected,

Accepted grub2 into eoan-proposed. The package will build now and be
available at https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/grub2/2.04-1ubuntu12.1
in a few hours, and then in the -proposed repository.

Please help us by testing this new package.  See
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation on how
to enable and use -proposed.  Your feedback will aid us getting this
update out to other Ubuntu users.

If this package fixes the bug for you, please add a comment to this bug,
mentioning the version of the package you tested and change the tag from
verification-needed-eoan to verification-done-eoan. If it does not fix
the bug for you, please add a comment stating that, and change the tag
to verification-failed-eoan. In either case, without details of your
testing we will not be able to proceed.

Further information regarding the verification process can be found at
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QATeam/PerformingSRUVerification .  Thank you in
advance for helping!

N.B. The updated package will be released to -updates after the bug(s)
fixed by this package have been verified and the package has been in
-proposed for a minimum of 7 days.

** Changed in: grub2 (Ubuntu Eoan)
       Status: Triaged => Fix Committed

** Tags added: verification-needed verification-needed-eoan

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1848892

Title:
  "error: Unknown TPM error." after upgrading to grub 2.04

Status in grub2 package in Ubuntu:
  Fix Released
Status in grub2 source package in Eoan:
  Fix Committed
Status in grub2 source package in Focal:
  Fix Released

Bug description:
  [Impact]
  Some specific system (listed in upstream thread at https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/grub-devel/2019-10/msg00104.html)

  Mostly ASUS systems, but also reported on some Dell systems.

  The affected systems are used to boot in UEFI mode and will fail to
  write measurements to the possible onboard TPM, causing failure to
  boot.

  
  [Test case]
  1) Boot affected system to Ubuntu
  2) Verify that the system boots successfully to Ubuntu, without "unknown TPM error" messages.

  [Regression potential]
  Low risk of regression, as this changes the current behavior only to avoid failing to boot when such errors are encountered, instead switching the behavior to writing debug messages (if debugging is enabled only) in such cases. Further work may be needed later to correct or mitigate these errors if TPM measurements are needed to work on the affected systems, as such measurements would otherwise be incomplete.

  ---

  After upgrading to eoan today (via `do-release-upgrade -d`), my laptop
  failed to boot into the OS. I got the grub 2.04 screen (showing only
  Ubuntu), but selecting that gave me about 20 lines of "error: Unknown
  TPM error.", followed by "error: you need to load the kernel first"
  and no way to proceed/recover. Advanced options didn't work either.
  Dropping into the grub console and writing a simple command like `set
  root=(hd1,gpt5)` failed again with a TPM error. It goes without saying
  that booting had worked before with disco/grub 2.02.

  As a workaround, I eventually managed to boot using an eoan live CD,
  chroot'ed into my system, added the `disco main` repo, and forcefully
  downgraded to disco's 2.02. After reinstalling grub to the efi
  partition, booting finally worked again (with grub 2.02).

  lsb_release -rd
  Description:	Ubuntu 19.10
  Release:	19.10

  apt-cache policy grub-efi
  grub-efi:
    Installed: 2.02+dfsg1-12ubuntu2
    Candidate: 2.04-1ubuntu12
    Version table:
       2.04-1ubuntu12 500
          500 http://ubuntu.inode.at/ubuntu eoan/main amd64 Packages
   *** 2.02+dfsg1-12ubuntu2 500
          500 http://ubuntu.inode.at/ubuntu disco/main amd64 Packages
          100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 19.10
  Package: grub-efi 2.02+dfsg1-12ubuntu2
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.3.0-18.19-generic 5.3.1
  Uname: Linux 5.3.0-18-generic x86_64
  NonfreeKernelModules: zfs zunicode zavl icp zcommon znvpair
  ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu8
  Architecture: amd64
  CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
  Date: Sat Oct 19 23:20:07 2019
  InstallationDate: Installed on 2017-03-05 (958 days ago)
  InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS "Xenial Xerus" - Release amd64 (20170215.2)
  SourcePackage: grub2
  UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to eoan on 2019-10-19 (0 days ago)

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