Dear all, this morning my desktop computer (HP Z220) running debian stable, instead of booting, gave me a bad surprise. It read something like this:
error: symbol 'grub_calloc' not found I was able to fix it by booting from cd into rescue mode and re-install grub. As far as I remember I didn't do any "suspicious" things to my computer yesterday. First investigations: Check the update log: ---- # tail -20 /var/log/apt/history.log Start-Date: 2020-07-30 12:50:35 Commandline: /usr/bin/unattended-upgrade Upgrade: grub-common:amd64 (2.02+dfsg1-20, 2.02+dfsg1-20+deb10u1), grub-xen-bin:amd64 (2.02+dfsg1-20, 2.02+dfsg1-20+deb10u1), grub2-common:amd64 (2.02+dfsg1-20, 2.02+dfsg1-20+deb10u1), grub-pc:amd64 (2.02+dfsg1-20, 2.02+dfsg1-20+deb10u1), grub-pc-bin:amd64 (2.02+dfsg1-20, 2.02+dfsg1-20+deb10u1), grub-xen-host:amd64 (2.02+dfsg1-20, 2.02+dfsg1-20+deb10u1) End-Date: 2020-07-30 12:50:47 Start-Date: 2020-07-30 12:50:52 Commandline: /usr/bin/unattended-upgrade Upgrade: firefox-esr-l10n-de:amd64 (68.10.0esr-1~deb10u1, 68.11.0esr-1~deb10u1), firefox-esr:amd64 (68.10.0esr-1~deb10u1, 68.11.0esr-1~deb10u1) End-Date: 2020-07-30 12:50:58 Start-Date: 2020-07-31 09:30:07 Commandline: /usr/bin/unattended-upgrade Upgrade: grub-common:amd64 (2.02+dfsg1-20+deb10u1, 2.02+dfsg1-20+deb10u2), grub-xen-bin:amd64 (2.02+dfsg1-20+deb10u1, 2.02+dfsg1-20+deb10u2), grub2-common:amd64 (2.02+dfsg1-20+deb10u1, 2.02+dfsg1-20+deb10u2), grub-pc:amd64 (2.02+dfsg1-20+deb10u1, 2.02+dfsg1-20+deb10u2), grub-pc-bin:amd64 (2.02+dfsg1-20+deb10u1, 2.02+dfsg1-20+deb10u2), grub-xen-host:amd64 (2.02+dfsg1-20+deb10u1, 2.02+dfsg1-20+deb10u2) End-Date: 2020-07-31 09:30:21 Start-Date: 2020-07-31 09:44:40 Commandline: apt-get remove unattended-upgrades Remove: unattended-upgrades:amd64 (1.11.2) End-Date: 2020-07-31 09:44:41 ---- # uname -a Linux xxxx-Debian 4.19.0-9-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 4.19.118-2+deb10u1 (2020-06-07) x86_64 GNU/Linux ---- Ok, there's the unattended-upgrade (which I honestly wasn't even aware of) and it did some upgrade to grub which apparently broke the boot process. I guess there's something wrong with a recent grub update, as I'm not the only one facing this problem during the past days: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=966575 https://askubuntu.com/questions/1263125/how-to-fix-a-grub-boot-error-symbol-grub-calloc-not-found I didn't expect this to happen with a debian stable. Please let me know if you're interested in further investigation and let me know what to do or what information you need. Best regards, Christoph
