[Ubuntu] New /boot/grub/menu.lst after `apt-get upgrade`?

Posted on June 8, 2018

Docker

Linux Basics

Ubuntu 16.04

DigitalOcean

By Dillon Reyna

Hi there!

Just started a new droplet with Docker.

I wanted to make sure I have the newest version, so I ran apt-get update and apt-get upgrade after which I got the following in Terminal:

A new version of /boot/grub/menu.lst is available, but the version
     │ installed currently has been locally modified.
 
     │ What would you like to do about menu.lst?
 
     │      install the package maintainer's version
     │      keep the local version currently installed
     │      show the differences between the versions
     │      show a side-by-side difference between the versions
     │      show a 3-way difference between available versions
     │      do a 3-way merge between available versions (experimental)   
     │      start a new shell to examine the situation

I’ve never edited the menu.lst file, I imagine this is something done by DO.

What exactly is happening here, and what option should I select?

Thanks!

Dillon

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Jivan Pal

September 20, 2019

To those still asking what to do in this situation:

I’ve always just gone with “Keep local version currently installed”, and not faced any issues as a result. More recently, you can see that “Show the differences between the versions” results in:

Line by line differences between versions
There are no non-white space differences in the files.

So it literally does not matter whether you choose “Install the package maintainer’s version” or “Keep the local version currently installed”.

As I mentioned in reply to @mahnuh, since the file in question is used during the boot process, DigitalOcean might just hook into the VM and put a default version of the file there if it’s missing, or even always put their own version there on boot/reboot. If they do indeed do it always, then the subject of this thread is moot, since it literally doesn’t matter which option you choose; they will always automatically replace the existing file with the “right one”.

Milan Vit

June 12, 2018

Update: after finding this discussion, I chose to keep the current version (prompted twice). After that, I rebooted my server and crossed fingers and it looks like it survived the reboot.

So I suppose the “keep current version” is not an entirely bad option.