LTS 10.04.3 Will not boot new kernel

[mellofone]

I've been messing around with a kernel update, but the system won't boot the newer kernel no matter what I've tried. This is an LTS 10.04.3 install (it's a virtual machine). I apt-get upgraded and installed linux-image-2.6.32-37-server (dpkg proves this). I've looked at the grub.cfg, and the new kernel menuentry is listed properly at the first location as:

menuentry 'Ubuntu, with Linux 2.6.32-37-server' --class ubuntu --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os

I've used grub-set-default to 0, I've also tried grub-set-default "Ubuntu, with Linux 2.6.32-37-server" and it continues to boot 2.6.32-21-server every time. That was the kernel that was originally installed upon first installation of Ubuntu. I've run update-grub several times, and that doesn't make a difference either.

I'm sure I am doing something wrong, but for the life of me I can't figure out what. Any suggestions?

[Karlchen]

Hello, mellofone.

Modifying the file /boot/grub/grub.cfg is not the recommended way of modifying the grub configuration. - Inspecting it is all right of course.
Instead modify the file /etc/default/grub and then run the command sudo update-grub before the next reboot.
As a matter of fact dpkg should have done so in the process of installing the kernel 2.6.32-37 already, because whenever you install a new kernel version dpkg will try to make sure that this kernel version is the one which will be used on next reboot.
This has always worked fine and automatically and without any manual intervention here. Here means on my Ubuntu 10.04 Desktop 32-bit.

As running sudo update-grub will do no harm, could you please run it and post the output here? Perhaps this will give a hint as to why your VM keeps on booting the old kernel.

Hm, might be caused by the way the VM gets launched perhaps? Perhaps the host software launching the VM remembers the old kernel name and directly launches a commandline referencing kernel 2.6.32-21?

HTH,
Karl