GRUB_DEFAULT default (not a typo)

[Tom H]

On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 11:46 AM, Kevin O'Gorman <kogorman at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I've been following another discussion, "Changing grub default boot order"
> and took a look at /etc/default/grub, where the line
> GRUB_DEFAULT=saved
> appeared. I don't think I put that there, but I could not swear to it. I
> seem to recall that this setting used to cause GRUB to remember the last
> entry used and to use it again by default. That is not happening on my
> machine, a fresh Xubuntu install of 12.04.
>
> Instead, GRUB always defaults to entry 0, and I have to change it to entry 5
> because entry 0 is bogus, GRUB having picked up some historical artifacts
> and put them in the menu.
>
> This seems weird. Should it work? Should it even be allowed? It has
> persisted through several kernel upgrades, so it has not caused great
> mischief....

AFAIK Ubuntu's default is "GRUB_DEFAULT=0" (it's upstreams's default) .

"GRUB_DEFAULT=saved" is useful/functional if you've used
"grub-set-default" or "grub-reboot" to set the default grub entry or
if you've set "GRUB_SAVEDEFAULT=true" (which is unset by default and
which you need to set in order for grub ro re-use the last menuentry
choice).