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When I boot from GRUB, I get various error messages from GRUB, apparently at random : "invalid arch independent ELF magic" or "incompatible license" or "file not found". I can boot from the rescue DVD and then the main disk, /dev/sda, seems OK. I can fsck it (no error), I can mount, it can even use it as root (from the rescue DVD, boot with root=/dev/sda1). But the machine cannot reboot without the DVD rescue.

What I tried (without any success):

  • grub-install /dev/sda No error but the problem stays the same
  • Boot repair no error message but not better aftwerwards. You can check its report
  • removing the kernel and reinstalling it
  • removing GRUB, moving /boot/grub and reinstalling it

Debian stable "wheezy". I am not aware of any external recent event (no upgrade, no physical problem on the hardware). The PC has a few years, no UEFI, a regular Dell BIOS.

Versions of grub:

% dpkg -l 'grub*' Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold | Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend |/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad) ||/ Name Version Architecture Description +++-======================-================-================-================================================== un grub <none> (no description available) ii grub-common 1.99-27+deb7u1 i386 GRand Unified Bootloader (common files) un grub-coreboot <none> (no description available) un grub-doc <none> (no description available) un grub-efi <none> (no description available) un grub-efi-amd64 <none> (no description available) un grub-efi-ia32 <none> (no description available) un grub-emu <none> (no description available) un grub-ieee1275 <none> (no description available) un grub-legacy <none> (no description available) un grub-legacy-doc <none> (no description available) un grub-linuxbios <none> (no description available) ii grub-pc 1.99-27+deb7u1 i386 GRand Unified Bootloader, version 2 (PC/BIOS versi ii grub-pc-bin 1.99-27+deb7u1 i386 GRand Unified Bootloader, version 2 (PC/BIOS binar un grub-yeeloong <none> (no description available) un grub2 <none> (no description available) ii grub2-common 1.99-27+deb7u1 i386 GRand Unified Bootloader (common files for version
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  • Are you certain that these are from GRUB? Particularly incompatible license doesn't sound like GRUB to me. Exactly which version of GRUB is installed? (Post the output of dpkg -l 'grub*'.) Commented Jul 22, 2013 at 13:20
  • Certain. I cannot copy-and-paste easily but just after, I had "Entering rescue mode... grub rescue>" Also, see unix.stackexchange.com/questions/74087/… Commented Jul 22, 2013 at 13:24
  • That's one I haven't heard of before. You learn something new every day I guess. I take it you have reinstalled the GRUB packages as well as grub-install the bootloader? Since obviously if the files on disk got corrupted for whatever reason, grub-install won't help you. I had some really weird boot problems a while ago and one of the things I did which ultimately helped solve the problem was installing a kernel upgrade; I imagine the kernel files had become corrupted somehow, but it still mostly worked. Commented Jul 22, 2013 at 13:30
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    Yes, I aptitude remove grub* and then aptitude install them again before running grub-install. Commented Jul 22, 2013 at 13:32
  • OK, so that's not it then. Thanks for confirming. (Good question by the way.) Commented Jul 22, 2013 at 13:33

1 Answer 1

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Maybe you are suffering from corruption at that particular block. Sounds unlikely, but have you tried reading the first few hundred kBs of that disk 4-5 times, and running checksums on the resulting file?

dd if=/dev/sdX | shasum -a 256 ?
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    Always the same value. Isn't it normal, since the readings after the first one will be from the kernel I/O cache? Commented Jul 22, 2013 at 13:26

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