Re: What does it mean when GRUB fails to find a kernel symbol?

[Saj Goonatilleke]

Thanks, Pascal and Goh, for your replies.

(Your messages did not land in my mailbox, hence this self-reply.)

> Because the old core image lacks a symbol required by the new module.

I had assumed the symbol had been present in GRUB for a long time.
This was wrong.  grub_disk_native_sectors was renamed from
grub_disk_get_size somewhat recently.
I think this rename provides half the answer.

The other half probably has something to do with the storied history of
these machines.  They were updated in-place from a previous Debian major
release.  Something may have gone wrong there.  Perhaps we somehow ended
up with an old latent core image on one of our disks -- a core that was
built from before the symbol rename.

Anyway, yes, it seems this was another case of a core-module divergence.