GRUB_RECORDFAIL_TIMEOUT prevents servers from booting
Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
grub2 (Ubuntu) |
Invalid
|
Undecided
|
Unassigned |
Bug Description
On Ubuntu, if there's a power failure or the system is otherwise left in a bad state on its last boot, GRUB2 will just hang there indefinitely waiting for user input to select the kernel to boot and any relevant kernel command-line options. This is annoying since most of the test systems are headless so when seeing an unresponsive system the server operator have to go attach a HDMI display and USB keyboard only to find out there was no serious system error but just the system hanging at GRUB for whatever reason at that time.
Michael Larabel have problems booting his Ubuntu server farm due to it GRUB being configured to use GRUB_RECORDFAIL
According to Michael - Ubuntu seems to be the only major distribution though dealing with GRUB_RECORDFAIL
If indeed Ubuntu is the only distribution with this setting, then maybe it should be changed?
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description: | updated |
description: | updated |
The behavior you describe is the result of a deliberate design decision, not a bug.
- A power cut after the system has fully booted does not result in a GRUB prompt.
- A power cut before the system has fully booted is indistinguishable from any other boot failure. The only thing we can say with certainty is that the system failed to boot. We absolutely do not want to try to boot a second time with the same options without giving the admin a chance to interact with the system.
If a power cut on a *booted* system is resulting in the user being thrown to a bootloader prompt, that would be a bug. But that is not the behavior being described here.
We are not going to degrade the experience for users who need to debug/recover from a failed boot in exchange for optimizing for the unusual case of someone cutting the power in the middle of the boot and expecting a non-interactive subsequent boot.