Bug 769501

I yum updated my fc15 to fc16 which worked ok and booted with grub from 
the fc15 install.

Not being happy with not being able to grub-install anymore, because
grub-install didn't exist on fc15,
I then tried a grub2-install --force /dev/sda and ended up with
this blank grub menu on boot.  (--force was required due to the
lack of 

Then I found (via rescue) that /etc/grub2.cfg was symlink that didn't have a 
target file;  /boot/grub2/grub2.cfg didn't exist.

Fixed this by   grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg  (in rescue mode)
and now it boots ok.

Seems that grub2-install should check for the existence of a grub2.cfg
and run grub2-mkconfig to create one if it didn't exist.

Not sure yet if yum updates do this automatically with fc16 kernel upgrades...

(posted before finishing a sentence...)

 ... lack of a big enough embedding area; which I presume is a dedicated
partition for grub2; yet to figure out the magic to create that)

(In reply to comment #0)
> 1. Tried to change boot system from GRUB to GRUB2(?)

How did you do that?

Did you upgrade from a previous version to f16? How?

@Mads Kiilerich,
It's been a while since I had this experience, but as I remember I was using my favorite package interface, Yum Extender, to remove and install applications.  One was GRUB and GRUB2.  Not knowing what was used for sure, assuming that the GRUBs would work like any other application with regard to installation and removal, and also assuming that the later version is always better, I believe I removed whatever was installed and installed the one I wanted.

Please note that I was simply attempting to customize a fresh install of FC16.

At that point, the whole thing fell apart.  Nothing I could do would get back a regular GRUB screen.  There was simply no way to get the system to boot, and I was left with the useless GRUB prompt.

It is obvious that GRUB is not quite ready for primetime, at least not for GRUB2 and not as implemented by Fedora.  Even third-party editors for the application do not work yet out of the box, and that leaves the user with ony a partially customizable system.  I find that contrary to the whole intent of Linux.

The solution was to reinstall the OS completely from scratch.  And since there is no re-fresh install, it is the only solution.

Thanks for your interest.

If you had a fresh install of f16 then you also had grub2, so it is a bit unclear what really happened.

The boot loader is a very critical part and indeed not an ordinary application. It is possible to customize it in many ways ... or to put the whole system in a state where there is no simple way out.

Yes, it is clearly a very confusing situation.  IMHO, the setup is not quite ready for prime time.  Things definately need to be simplified with a goof-proof application design.

I have used been instructed to try Boot Repair.  It worked with a network connection when booting from Ubuntu Secure Remix.  If finally gave me a report, which can be viewed at http://paste.ubuntu.com/1219427/.  But the bottom line was that it cannot be recovered, and that I have to find a way to mount the LVM partitions and backup what I want to save before a fresh install.