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I'm running Ubuntu 12.04. This morning after a long-overdue reboot for a long-pending kernel update, I discovered that I could no longer start up any VirtualBox machines; long story short, this lead me to discover that I am currently running kernel 3.0:

root@vmsys:~# uname -r
3.0.0-19-generic

This is odd, considering that I understand 12.04 runs on kernel 3.2, and I have a 3.2 kernel installed:

root@vmsys:~# ls /boot/vmlinuz-3.2*
/boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-24-generic  /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-25-generic

root@vmsys:~# aptitude search linux-image-3.2.0-25-generic
i   linux-image-3.2.0-25-generic                              - Linux kernel image for version 3.2.0 on 64 bit x86 SMP             
p   linux-image-3.2.0-25-generic:i386                         - Linux kernel image for version 3.2.0 on 32 bit x86 SMP             
p   linux-image-3.2.0-25-generic-pae:i386                     - Linux kernel image for version 3.2.0 on 32 bit x86 SMP

Now, I did have an issue not too long ago that I only resolved after tinkering in Grub's menu selections and poking around in all kinds of places I'm not very familiar with, so I may very well have caused whatever the issue is. This system is also an upgrade, although I no longer recall what the original version I was running; perhaps its age is to blame.

The long and the short, though, is that I need to have my VirtualBox kernel modules in order to run my VirtualBox machines, however the repositories install them for kernel 3.2 -- not 3.0! I certainly could install the kernel 3.0 modules myself -- that's not beyond my capabilities -- but that seems like dodging the real issue, which is that Ubuntu and/or Grub are somehow mis-configured to boot an outdated kernel. So the question really is: How do I get the 3.2 kernel into Grub's menu selection (and ideally as the default selection) without messing things up any further (i.e. so that I don't find myself right back here again with the next kernel update)?

I did try apt-get install linux-image-generic --reinstall, to no avail -- Grub still doesn't show any 3.2 kernel options, and boot into this 3.0 kernel by default. It seems really strange that a kernel update, which has always updated Grub's menu in the past, would leave itself entirely off the menu...

Edit: I didn't pay much attention to the tag, but checking further I just discovered that I have the package grub installed, but there's a grub2 package available which is not installed. Should I be on grub2, or is that not the problem?

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You should have grub-pc package installed. With that, run:

cd /boot/
sudo update-grub
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  • Thank you! This got me pointed in the right direction, although I had to take an extra step to delete (actually I just renamed) /boot/grub/menu.lst, which update-grub regenerated for me. I'm now running kernel 3.2.0-25-generic, but more importantly I can use my VirtualBox machines again! Thank you!
    – Kromey
    Jun 27, 2012 at 16:27

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