[Bug 669481] Re: Timeout should not be -1 if $recordfail

[Barosl LEE]

Same problem here. I've suffered from the servers which are stuck in the
GRUB phase occasionally. Now I know the reason. The recordfail feature
can be a useful, but setting the timeout to -1 is too excessive in my
opinion.

As the above stated, changing it to a reasonable value, or at least
making an option to change the behavior in /etc/default/grub would
greatly help. These changes are particularly more important in the
server edition.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/669481

Title:
  Timeout should not be -1 if $recordfail

Status in “grub2” package in Ubuntu:
  Triaged

Bug description:
  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

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