On a recent install of Ubuntu 18.04 LTS on a Lenovo T510 laptop I started seeing a message displayed after the GRUB menu exited and Linux started up. The message is: "error:no symbol table" Press any key to continue:
I had been experimenting with various hangul IMEs at the time this message appeared.
I looked in the error logs for anything that might be connected and didn't come up with anything.
It is aggravating and makes boot take longer, but otherwise the system seems to be working ok.
I discovered that this problem began with Ubuntu 17.no symbol table error after upgrading to 17.04
The solution was to reinstall the grub loader. Reinstalling the grub loader stopped the "no symbol table" message, however, when I did this on my machine I got the following response from the package installer:
sudo grub-install /dev/sda
Installing for i386-pc platform. grub-install: warning: Sector 32 is already in use by the program `FlexNet'; avoiding it. This software may cause boot or other problems in future. Please ask its authors not to store data in the boot track. Installation finished. No error reported.
Regardless of the message, I can still boot and the error message stopped.
On investigating "FlexNet" I found that it was installed in the boot track by Flexlm, a license manager for SolidWorks, that I have installed on the PC partition on my drive. I multiboot an old version of Windows and Ubuntu. It is probably not an option to remove this entry on sector 32 because the SolidWorks software would then stop working, which is the sole reason I keep the Windows partition.
MicroSoft recommends uninstalling the software which is not a viable answer.
This is not Microsoft software!
Flexnet Update Manager software application (formerly Acresso software updater).
This application is installed with some third party software programs. It is supposed to automatically check for updates for these third party software programs.