Ubuntu Grub fails with: unknown command recordfail

grubgrub2Ubuntu

I installed some patches on a Ubuntu 10.04 Server (LTS) system today. After rebooting the newly patched server the boot process is now hosed with an unknown command 'recordfail' message.

If I hit a key, the machine just reboots and gets stuck at the same place. I've tried removing the recordfail line in grub, (E key to edit grub entries) but then I get an unaligned pointer error.

Anyone know what this is from or how to fix it? I've booted a Live system and mounted the hobbled system onto /mnt/slash to try and reinstall the grub packages (aptitude reinstall grub-common grub-pc) from a chroot, but no luck. Also tried grub-install /dev/sda which says it completed without error, but still no boot. Some googling turns up a handful of hits in various languages with only one solution which was a full reinstall of the entire system (yikes!). There's gotta be a better way.

UPDATE: After reconfiguring grub-pc
http://i.imgur.com/aCWsKRQ.png

UPDATE 2: ended up creating a tarball of /boot/grub from a working system and un-tarring onto the busted system. I then booted to a live system, created a chroot of the broken system, and ran grub-setup/update-grub from the chroot. I still get the recordfail error message, but the system at least boots now.

Best Answer

  • edited /etc/defaut/grub and removed GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT
  • booted from live media, and ran grub-setup /dev/vda -v along with update-grub from chroot