Bug#544377: grub-common: broke grub1 install?

[Andres Salomon]

Package: grub-common
Version: 1.97~beta1-1
Severity: critical

Somehow, it appears that upgrading grub-common to 1.97~beta1-1 has
caused my system to stop booting.  I'm running an up-to-date sid system
(as of tonight) on a thinkpad x200s; grub1 was installed as the
bootloader.

grub-legacy 0.97-56 and grub-common 1.97~beta1-1 are the only grub
packages installed, with the dummy grub packaged marked 'rc'.

After dist-upgrading and rebooting, grub just hangs.  The BIOS finishes
loading, and I get a blinking cursor.. but no grub menu.  I don't get
any errors from grub either, so it looks like it's not even getting to
stage2.  I last rebooted 10 days ago, and grub worked fine then. The
last reboot was a kernel upgrade (2.6.31-rcsomething), and neither grub
nor the MBR have been touched since then (other than routine package
upgrades via dist-upgrade).

I will boot from grub on a usb stick for the next few days and try and
leave everything as-is; if you don't ask me for additional info, I'll
go ahead and fix booting on the machine.