4656 - Attempting to upgrade the vTM-VA failed with the message "The upgrade process has encountered an error and cannot continue. Please contact your support provider to help you fix this problem."

This article describes an issue where upgrading vTM fails with the message "The upgrade process has encountered an error and cannot continue. Please contact your support provider to help you fix this problem."

When attempting to upgrade the vTM failed with the message:

The upgrade process has encountered an error and cannot continue. 
Please contact your support provider to help you fix this problem.

A review of the /support/appliance/upgrade log, the following shows

Running postinst hook script /usr/sbin/update-grub.
Failed to find grub device for /dev/hda1
User postinst hook script [/usr/sbin/update-grub] exited with value 255
dpkg: error processing linux-image-2.6.24-amd64-vmware-generic (--install):
subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 255
Setting up zxtm-90 (90r2-60373) ...

Processing triggers for libc6 ...
ldconfig deferred processing now taking place
Errors were encountered while processing:
linux-image-2.6.24-amd64-vmware-generic
Attempting upgrade Stingray software 9.0->9.0r3: Tue Nov 13 17:13:32 EET 2012
dpkg: error processing packages/*.deb (--install):
cannot access archive: No such file or directory
Errors were encountered while processing:
packages/*.deb

The vTM upgrade file attempts to load the installation file from the /sda partition. If the default Hypervisor grub device points to /hda then this particular problem can result. Changing the reference from /dev/sda in the /boot/grub/device.map to /hda resolved the issue.