[lug] weird grub / x11 problem

[Bear Giles]

Background: I'm running ubuntu 10.10. It periodically installs new 
kernels and I just got a message saying that the /boot partition was 
full.  So I nuked some old entries (via dpkg --purge, not simply 
deleting the files in the /boot partition) and rebooted.

No X.

... go through a few iterations....

I am now consistently seeing three disturbing things.

1) The grub screen shows the 2.6.31-17 kernel and mem test but is 
totally nonresponsive to the keyboard.  There is no 2.6.31-17 kernel 
image still in the /boot partition.  (It had been there but was nuked.  
See above.)

2) The /var/log/messages files shows that the grub loader is seeing the 
actual kernel images.

3) The system is running a 2.6.31-17 kernel even though there's none 
installed.

This is happening despite doing a full apt-get install --reinstall on a 
later kernel and running grub-update (or is it update-grub) as root.  
Repeatedly.

I can work backwards and realize that it partly works since nothing has 
been changed on the /boot partition after deleting old kernel images.  
There's no dname entries but the data is still on the disk.  This would 
explain how an old grub loader could load a deleted kernel image.

But I have no idea why there's a disconnect between what grub is showing 
and what /var/log/messages is showing in terms of recognized kernel 
images, or why grub is ignoring my keyboard entirely.

Ideas?

Thanks,

Bear