James Harper <james.harper@bendigoit.com.au> wrote:
The serial port shows : GRUB loading. Welcome to GRUB! error: ELF header smaller than expected. Entering rescue mode... grub rescue>
But it's redrawing the screen constantly so I can't enter any keystrokes. One theory I have is that in crashing, grub is just restarting itself over and over, but maybe someone else has another theory about it that might help?
Your theory is plausible: the header it's complaining about is presumably that of one of its own modules (I checked mine and they're "ELF relocatable"). That shouldn't crash it, though. what happens if you type a command to boot the kernel anyway, despite the redrawing of the display? Alternatively, can you enter the BIOS configuration and boot from PXE or something else that would bypass Grub? In the longer term, this would be worth setting up if there's another machine that can be used for PXE (you also have to adjust the DHCP configuration, but I'm sure you know all about it already).