Ubuntu upgrade fails something about kernel?

Question

Im running an ubuntu server version 10.04 LTS. I did a "sudo apt-get upgrade" on my server today and it failed with the following:

Setting up linux-image-2.6.32-318-ec2 (2.6.32-318.38) ...
Running depmod.
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-318-ec2
Could not find postinst hook script [update-grub].
Looked in: '/bin', '/sbin', '/usr/bin', '/usr/sbin'
dpkg: error processing linux-image-2.6.32-318-ec2 (--configure):
 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 2
Setting up linux-image-2.6.32-319-ec2 (2.6.32-319.39) ...
Running depmod.
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-319-ec2
Could not find postinst hook script [update-grub].
Looked in: '/bin', '/sbin', '/usr/bin', '/usr/sbin'
dpkg: error processing linux-image-2.6.32-319-ec2 (--configure):
 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 2
Setting up linux-image-2.6.32-34-server (2.6.32-34.77) ...
Running depmod.
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-34-server
Could not find postinst hook script [update-grub].
Looked in: '/bin', '/sbin', '/usr/bin', '/usr/sbin'
dpkg: error processing linux-image-2.6.32-34-server (--configure):
 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 2
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of linux-image-ec2:
 linux-image-ec2 depends on linux-image-2.6.32-319-ec2; however:
  Package linux-image-2.6.32-319-ec2 is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing linux-image-ec2 (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of linux-ec2:
 linux-ec2 depends on linux-image-ec2 (= 2.6.32.319.20); however:
  Package linux-image-ec2 is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing linux-ec2 (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of linux-image-server:
 linux-image-server depends on linux-image-2.6.32-34-server; however:
  Package linux-image-2.6.32-34-server is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing linux-image-server (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
No apport report written because MaxReports is reached already
                                                              No apport report written because MaxReports is reached already
                                                                                                                            No apport report written because MaxReports is reached already
                                                                                                                                                                                          No apport report written because MaxReports is reached already
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of linux-server:
 linux-server depends on linux-image-server (= 2.6.32.34.40); however:
  Package linux-image-server is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing linux-server (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Errors were encountered while processing:
 linux-image-2.6.32-318-ec2
 linux-image-2.6.32-319-ec2
 linux-image-2.6.32-34-server
 linux-image-ec2
 linux-ec2
 linux-image-server
 linux-server
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

Any idea how to fix this?

Answer 1

The key error is this:

update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-318-ec2
Could not find postinst hook script [update-grub].
Looked in: '/bin', '/sbin', '/usr/bin', '/usr/sbin'

All the other errors follow from that one.

It seems that dpkg wants to run update-grub, but it's not available on your host. On my host, I have

$ which update-grub
/usr/sbin/update-grub
$ dpkg --search /usr/sbin/update-grub
grub-pc: /usr/sbin/update-grub
$ apt-cache policy grub-pc
grub-pc:
  Installed: 1.98+20100804-5ubuntu3.3
  Candidate: 1.98+20100804-5ubuntu3.3
  Version table:
 *** 1.98+20100804-5ubuntu3.3 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick-updates/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     1.98+20100804-5ubuntu3 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick/main amd64 Packages

Depending on your hardware, you might have a different one of the grub-* packages installed:

$ apt-file -x search '/usr/sbin/update-grub$'
grub: /usr/sbin/update-grub
grub-coreboot: /usr/sbin/update-grub
grub-efi-amd64: /usr/sbin/update-grub
grub-efi-ia32: /usr/sbin/update-grub
grub-ieee1275: /usr/sbin/update-grub
grub-pc: /usr/sbin/update-grub

You almost certainly have one of the above packages installed. Use dpkg --search /usr/sbin/update-grub to find out which one it is, then apt-get --reinstall install to reinstall it.