Error: Invalid environment block

[ChaosChris2009]

Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala BETA, GNome

Downloded it fresh off of Ubuntu's main site

Have done a fresh install three times, Ubuntu's the primary OS

Upon boot-up GRUB makes a sad attempt to load, but fails in turn and gives me this message

Error: Invalid environment block

This has happened 3 times already!

Help, and thanks to anyone who helps

[ChaosChris2009]

Anyone?

[drfox]

When your GRUB2 menu is up
Press e to edit grub
Remove the line save_env recordfail
Press TAB
Press CTRL+X to boot

HTH

Larry

[Akita]

Same thing just happened to me on a normal boot an hour after a normal shutdown.

The grub menu fix won't work because it's grub giving the error BEFORE there's a menu. Hitting any key just gets a repeat of the error. G2 borked itself.

Does anybody know recovery procedures for grub2?

[dcstar]

Same thing just happened to me on a normal boot an hour after a normal shutdown.

The grub menu fix won't work because it's grub giving the error BEFORE there's a menu. Hitting any key just gets a repeat of the error. G2 borked itself.

Does anybody know recovery procedures for grub2?

Boot off the install CD and mount the drive so you can edit the file.

[drfox]

Karmic developers have made a real mistake by not making a visible grub menu the default. You need to get to a command prompt and edit this file:
/etc/default/grub
with vi - since you won't have a GUI, you won't be able to use gedit or kate
Find this line:
GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT=0
and edit it to look like this
#GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT=0
and save the file.
The you need to run:
update-grub
to get the grub2 menu to come up.
If you can't do that with your current configuration, you'll have to use a live CD and chroot to update your grub.

HTH Larry

[Peter09]

Post 3 just worked for me.

[Tim_Olaguna]

Karmic developers have made a real mistake by not making a visible grub menu the default. You need to get to a command prompt and edit this file:
/etc/default/grub
with vi - since you won't have a GUI, you won't be able to use gedit or kate
Find this line:
GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT=0
and edit it to look like this
#GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT=0
and save the file.
The you need to run:
update-grub
to get the grub2 menu to come up.
If you can't do that with your current configuration, you'll have to use a live CD and chroot to update your grub.

HTH Larry

This is a real disappointment which provides no usable option for me, apparently. I was trying to test 9.10 beta via VirtualBox when it starting throwing up this error upon every attempt to boot. Since VirtualBox drives are not "real" drives but *.vdi files I can figure no way to access and edit any files on the "test drive"; much less grub files. What a pain.

Update: I ended up deleting the whole installation and reinstalling. It seems to be coming up fine now whenever I boot up. BUT: The one thing I have not done so far is run "Search For Updates". Choosing that option now at best offers only a partial update. I believe it was doing only a partial update after my previous installation that brought on the boot failures described in notes above. I'll wait a few days before trying to another update. And then only do so if it provides a complete, rather than only partial, update of files.

Update 2: I waited a couple of days then tried a fresh boot of my VirtualBox install. It would not boot at all. Went back to the bad behavior described by others above. Remember, since this is an install on a virtual drive (a *.vdi file) instead of a real hard drive I can find NO WAY to get in and edit any grub files as suggested by some. Thus there is no way to remove the line "save_env recordfail".

My conclusion: the Beta is crap. Designed poorly to fail. Too bad. The earlier alphas at least enabled you to boot consistently when testing virtual installs. No way am I installing this on a hard drive or upgrading my existing hard-drive-based 9.04 Ubuntu system to 9.10 until this really bad bug is fixed. If it doesn't test well on a virtual install it doesn't get installed permanently on a hard drive.

[abgalphabet]

I encountered the same problem. It boot successfully again to my desktop environment after removing the line "save_env recordfail".

But what's happened to this problem?! or can i add the line back afterwards?

[abgalphabet]

The "save_env..." line is added back after i execute update-grub2 and it boot normally afterwards.