[Bug 797544] Re: grub2 waits forever for keystroke before booting default OS. headless server. hang.

[Florin Andrei]

This "feature" makes no sense to me. I've been using Linux on servers
since Slackware came on a stack of floppies. Any sysadmin worth their
salary will tell you it's an extremely bad decision to let the server
hang if it was improperly shut down. I want my servers to come back
online after an issue, why are you keeping them offline?

One of my 12.04 servers is crashing regularly due to a 3.2 kernel bug.
EVERY SINGLE TIME someone needs to walk all the way there and hit the
reset button. Lost power once - same thing, Ubuntu won't come up; but
Windows did; Red Hat did. This is revolting.

Please, please, please, remove this caricature of a "feature" from a
distribution meant for servers. Please ask experienced sysadmins before
making such changes. A server should come up ALL BY ITSELF whenever
possible. Do not prevent it from doing so.

I will update the kernel to a non-buggy version and reconfigure grub to
not hang anymore, but meanwhile this distribution is installed on
numerous of servers around the world and causes unnecessary downtime
because of a nonsensical decision in a package somewhere. :(

Ubuntu team, you have really let the ball drop on this one.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/797544

Title:
  grub2 waits forever for keystroke before booting default OS.  headless
  server. hang.

Status in “grub2” package in Ubuntu:
  Fix Released

Bug description:
  Binary package hint: grub2

  After a seemingly-routine "apt-get update" on an Ubuntu 10.10  server, the machine hangs on boot. 
  It is sitting at the grub2 prompt, waiting in vain for someone to come along and press <enter>.

  I have tried two workarounds:

  ---------------------------------------------
  Edit /etc/grub.d/00_header to remove the check for recordfail in:

  make_timeout ()
  {
      echo "set timeout=1"
  }
  --------------------------------------------------------------------
  In /etc/default/grub set
   GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT=2
  ---------------------------------
  Then "sudo update-grub"

  Now I'm pretty dang stuck.  There is plenty of forum activity on this
  issue, but no true solutions.

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