Bug#702800: grub-efi: Upgrade failed to install properly? symbol not found: grub_efi_secure_boot

[Colin Watson]

On Mon, Mar 11, 2013 at 12:21:01PM -0400, Daniel Kahn Gillmor wrote:
> i'm running grub from debian experimental on an EFI machine.  I
> installed grub 2.00-13 on february 19th, but haven't rebooted from
> then until yesterday.
> 
> When i booted, i got this failure from grub when invoking the "linux"
> command:
> 
>   symbol not found: `grub_efi_secure_boot'
> 
> i suspect this means that my EFI image is out of date, but i'm a
> little confused about why that would be.

Right.  (Just in case the Internet at large spots this; this has nothing
specifically to do with UEFI secure boot, and would have happened on any
GRUB core/modules ABI change.)

> i see that i have both of these files:
> 
>   /boot/efi/EFI/boot/bootx64.efi 
>   /boot/efi/EFI/debian/grubx64.efi
> 
> but only the latter was updated on February 19th the other is much
> older and the two files have different content.

The former is used on removable media; the latter is used on fixed
disks.  Perhaps, therefore, grub-install was invoked with --removable at
one point, which as far as I know is the only path by which the former
is created.

It's possible that your firmware prefers the former path if it can find
it; not all EFI systems quite work the way the spec says they should.  I
would suggest moving the former aside and seeing what happens, although
you should probably also check that the latter is in efibootmgr if your
firmware doesn't have a way to boot from a nominated file.

Cheers,

-- 
Colin Watson                                       [cjwatson at debian.org]