mark++

I just tried upgrade to Linux kernel 2.6.23.1 and failed boot with:

No setup signature found

I guess 2.6.23 uses new x86 setup code on i386, and this was incompatible with my current GRUB configuration. Specifically, the problem was that my “stage” files in /boot/grub were ancient (5 years old). Here’s the LKML thread where the solution was discovered.

I guess Debian doesn’t really upgrade the stage files automatically. This is a sensible “if it ain’t broke” policy, but in this case it screwed me.

Here’s what I did to fix things:

cp /usr/lib/grub/i386-pc/*stage* /boot/grub


I also ran thru the GRUB setup process again just to be safe (but this is probably not required).