Bug#492317: update breaks grub boot (MBR) "Grub Error 28: Selected item can not fit into memory"

[Alan Braslau]

Package: grub
Version: 0.97-42
Severity: critical
Justification: breaks the whole system


This bug has occured several times now.
Following the update of grub (apt-get upgrade),
rebooting the system fails yielding the message
"Grub Error 28: Selected item can not fit into memory"
whatever image is selected (including chainloader
to a Windows partition).

The system can be recovered by using a rescue CD
(Debian GNU/Linux LennyBeta2 "Lenny" - Official Beta i386 NETINST
Binary-1 20080608-11:24)
reinstalling grub on the MBR.
This appears to contain
grub_0.97-39_i386.deb

Thank you.

-- Package-specific info:

*********************** BEGIN /boot/grub/device.map
(hd0)	/dev/hda
(hd1)	/dev/hdb
*********************** END /boot/grub/device.map

*********************** BEGIN /proc/mounts
/dev/hda3 / ext3 rw,errors=remount-ro,data=ordered 0 0
/dev/hda6 /home/dogger ext3 rw,errors=continue,data=ordered 0 0
/dev/hdb1 /home/dogger2 ext3 rw,errors=continue,data=ordered 0 0
*********************** END /proc/mounts

*********************** BEGIN /boot/grub/menu.lst

-- System Information:
Debian Release: lenny/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.25
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

Versions of packages grub depends on:
ii  grub-common              1.96+20080724-1 GRand Unified Bootloader, version 
ii  libc6                    2.7-12          GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii  libncurses5              5.6+20080713-1  shared libraries for terminal hand

grub recommends no packages.

Versions of packages grub suggests:
pn  grub-legacy-doc               <none>     (no description available)
pn  mdadm                         <none>     (no description available)
pn  multiboot-doc                 <none>     (no description available)

-- no debconf information