How do you change the boot delay time on GRUB?

[E K]

--- On Wed, 6/9/10, Lennart Sorensen <lsorense-1wCw9BSqJbv44Nm34jS7GywD8/FfD2ys at public.gmane.org> wrote:

> From: Lennart Sorensen <lsorense-1wCw9BSqJbv44Nm34jS7GywD8/FfD2ys at public.gmane.org>
> Subject: Re: [TLUG]: How do you change the boot delay time on GRUB?
> To: tlug at ss.org
> Received: Wednesday, June 9, 2010, 12:08 PM
> On Wed, Jun 09, 2010 at 11:51:12AM
> -0400, Kevin Cozens wrote:
> > You aren't the only one. I certainly don't "get it". I
> went back to
> > using grub 1 on both of my machines.
> >
> > The configuration file for grub 2 seemed exceedingly
> complex compared to  
> > the simple four line entries of grub 1. Grub 2
> appeared to install, or  
> > create, a bunch of .mod files in my /boot partition
> and caused problems  
> > when doing kernel updates as the .mod files only
> allowed me to have 2  
> > active kernels with no room for the new (third) one.
> The .mod files  
> > might have been part of the kernel update process when
> using grub 2, but  
> > I can't be sure about that. I also read in several
> places that you need  
> > to run a command after changing the grub 2
> configuration file to make  
> > the changes available at the next boot. That smacks of
> the bad old days  
> > of LILO. At least grub should still give you a command
> line so you can  
> > enter the commands needed to make the system boot if
> you forgot to run  
> > the grub update program.
> 
> The .mod files are part of making grub2 much more
> robust.  Grub1 used
> a black map in the stage1 to load stage2 similar to how
> lilo uses
> blockmaps to load everything (which makes lilo very much
> not robust
> against any changes and unable to handle anything at boot
> time that wasn't
> preconfigured in).  Grub2 embeds the essential modules
> into stage1 and
> hence doesn't use blockmaps for anything.  Any
> additional features are
> loaded as modules in stage2 from the filesystem.  This
> should make grub2
> completely immune against any filesystem changes or
> updates, which grub1
> wasn't for the stage2 file, and lilo isn't for any files it
> accesses.
> 
> The modules are also part of having added a ton of new
> features and
> support for a lot more operating systems.  The old
> everything in one
> stage2 binary simply wasn't scalable even if you didn't
> care about the
> robustness issue.
> 
> > With grub 1, if you don't want to automatically boot
> into your default  
> > OS after a fixed delay, just comment out the "timeout"
> line and grub  
> > will wait indefinitely.
> 
> And in grub2 just set it to -1 and you get the same thing.
> 
> -- 
> Len Sorensen
> --
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With virtualization and boot-able USB keys, why add complexity to a boot loader in the first place?

EK



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