Comment 0 for bug 669481

Binary package hint: grub2

My experience is that $recordfail is not always written successfully, which is by default tested in grub.cfg (through grub.d/00_header)

This causes grub2 to set timeout=-1 which removes the timeout for bootup in these cases.

On computers which have not been configured for "USB Legacy" in the BIOS but use USB keyboards, this looks as if grub has frozen - because the keyboard does not respond. The consequence is that the computer won't boot without either knowledge on how to configure BIOS (and what) or using a PS/2 keyboard (not always available or possible to plugin).

My suggestion is that Ubuntu recognizes $recordfail but instead of disabling timeout (-1) it should be set to a relatively high value (such as 10 seconds). This will be enough to alert the user on what option is booting, and that the computer hasn't frozen, as well as enabling false/known failures to be ignored.

Maybe a future addition to recognising $recordfail is to have a warning on the boot menu, but that is outside the scope of this report.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.10
Package: grub-pc 1.98+20100804-5ubuntu3
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.35-22.35-generic-pae 2.6.35.4
Uname: Linux 2.6.35-22-generic-pae i686
Architecture: i386
Date: Mon Nov 1 15:33:30 2010
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu-Server 10.10 "Maverick Meerkat" - Release i386 (20101007)
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: grub2