You may need to re-run your boot loader[grub]

February 19th, 2015

Warning: This post is 9 years old. Some of this information may be out of date.

After updating an Ubuntu server I occasionally see the message you may need to re-run your boot loader[grub] after updating the kernel:

    Generating grub configuration file ...
    Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-3.13.0-44-generic
    Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-3.13.0-44-generic
    Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-3.11.0-12-generic
    Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-3.11.0-12-generic
    Found memtest86+ image: /boot/memtest86+.elf
    Found memtest86+ image: /boot/memtest86+.bin
    done
    The link /vmlinuz.old is a damaged link
    Removing symbolic link vmlinuz.old
      you may need to re-run your boot loader[grub]
    The link /initrd.img.old is a damaged link
    Removing symbolic link initrd.img.old
      you may need to re-run your boot loader[grub]

To actually perform the update you need to run the following command:

    sudo update-grub

This will regenerate the Grub config file:

    # sudo update-grub
    Generating grub configuration file ...
    Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-3.13.0-44-generic
    Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-3.13.0-44-generic
    Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-3.11.0-12-generic
    Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-3.11.0-12-generic
    Found memtest86+ image: /boot/memtest86+.elf
    Found memtest86+ image: /boot/memtest86+.bin
    done

Hope this helps somebody!