How to make the boot menu always time out?

SpectrumDT · #1 15th February 2008, 12:27 AM

Hello.

Still in the process of tweaking my Linux, I have one more question: When I boot my computer, I sometimes get a screen that says "Booting Fedora in N seconds, press any key to enter boot menu". Of course, this times out after N seconds and it boots automatically. This is great.

But sometimes it automatically enters the boot menu, forcing me to manually select a boot option before it will proceed. I haven't figured out what causes this (I'm pretty sure I am not accidentally hitting any key :P), but it is annoying. See, I want to be able to start up the computer, go away for a minute or so, and then come back to see the login menu. So it's annoying for it to pop up this boot menu and demand user input.

Can anyone tell me how I can make sure that the boot menu thing always times out on its own without requiring my input?

Thanks in advance.

Brian1 · #2 15th February 2008, 12:31 AM

Edit the /boot/grub/grub.conf file and place a # infront of hidden. It will now always bring up the boot list. Hopefully anything that happens will not cause the counter to stop here.

Brian

clay247 · #3 15th February 2008, 12:31 AM

Yeah this is pretty strange. Is it possible you have a sticky key on your keyboard?

SpectrumDT · #4 15th February 2008, 12:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brian1

Edit the /boot/grub/grub.conf file and place a # infront of hidden. It will now always bring up the boot list. Hopefully anything that happens will not cause the counter to stop here.

Brian

Thanks. But when you say "hidden", do you mean "hiddenmenu"?

Quote:

Originally Posted by clay247

Yeah this is pretty strange. Is it possible you have a sticky key on your keyboard?

I doubt it.

However, there is one thing: I have this USB hard drive. If I leave it connected during boot, my comp hangs forever, never even reaching the Fedora boot menu (at least not in polynomial time). So I have to remember to unplug it, and then re-plug it later. If I do this after turning on the computer, would it interpret that as pressing a key?

Dies · #5 15th February 2008, 12:57 AM

I would just set the timeout to 1 second.

You can always change it later.

clay247 · #6 15th February 2008, 02:26 AM

I have an old webcam that causes problems when its plugged in at boot. In /etc you can configure the order in which usb devices are loaded, and I tried to fix it there, but never got it to work correctly. My guess from searching around was modules were getting loaded out of order and it was blocking my integrated sound device.

I'm not sure why anything like that would cause this issue though. I would agree with Dies but I don't think it helps because you say sometimes it times-out and then sometimes it doesn't at all.

Brian1 · #7 15th February 2008, 08:58 PM

Sorry is is heddenmenu.

I would agree if the machine can boot USB that it trys rehard to boot off it. Change the sequence to place the harddrive before USB.

Brian

sidebrnz · #8 15th February 2008, 10:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brian1

Edit the /boot/grub/grub.conf file and place a # infront of hidden. It will now always bring up the boot list. Hopefully anything that happens will not cause the counter to stop here.

Brian, If I do that, will I have the "old" Grub behavior, where it shows the boot menu, and hitting Enter will get your default boot going without waiting for time out? If so, I'll do it because I see no reason to have to wait for time out just to get the default. I don't want to hijack the thread, so if it turns out we need to discuss this, I'll start a new one.

SpectrumDT · #9 15th February 2008, 11:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brian1

Sorry is is heddenmenu.

I would agree if the machine can boot USB that it trys rehard to boot off it. Change the sequence to place the harddrive before USB.

Brian

No, the boot order starts with the hard drive, then CD/DVD. There doesn't seem to be any option to boot from USB.

SpectrumDT · #10 17th February 2008, 12:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brian1

Edit the /boot/grub/grub.conf file and place a # infront of hidden. It will now always bring up the boot list. Hopefully anything that happens will not cause the counter to stop here.

Brian

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dies

I would just set the timeout to 1 second.

You can always change it later.

Now I've done both these things, but no luck. It still occasionally gets stuck in the menu and waits for user input.

I think it happens in cases where the system detects that it didn't shut down cleanly last time (like after a crash, or when I manually kill the comp during boot). Is this information useful?

Thanks again.