Comment # 2 on bug 960517 from James Carter

@Jiri, I agree -- I can't imagine the grub package not installing the 
new version on the spot (in its post script).  On the VM that I used to
test installation and upgrades, where the problem was most often 
encountered, /etc/default/grub_installdevice says:

(hd0,1)
activate
generic_mbr

which looks reasonable.  According to the mtime, the file was created
by the installer when I first set up this VM in 2013-11-xx to test 
installing OpenSuSE 13.1 and it hasn't been altered since.  The 
possibilities for weird locations of grub modules are limited: 

Number  Start   End     Size    Type     File system     Flags
 1      1049kB  16.1GB  16.1GB  primary  ext4            boot, type=83
 2      16.1GB  17.2GB  1075MB  primary  linux-swap(v1)  type=82

/boot/grub2/device.map says:
(hd0)   /dev/vda

The setup on other machines is similar: no weird setup for grub modules.