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by beagle3 3949 days ago
If you have an unattended server, there's an open bug since 12.04 that hasn't yet been fixed, that might make it get stuck in grub, forcing you to connect a keyboard to make it start. (Yes, it bit me with embedded hardware stored in a closet on a pole 20 feet high in the air)

http://serverfault.com/questions/243343/headless-ubuntu-serv...

The fix is in 12.04-proposed, but was never released, never applied to 14.04 and 15.04 last time I checked. Which is quite ridiculous, IMHO. (Can't find the Launchpad entry right now)
3 comments
barosl 3949 days ago
I second that this is pretty annoying. The problem is that Ubuntu's grub.cfg is configured to wait forever until the user manually chooses a new boot option if the last booting failed. However, sometimes a temporary error can happen during the booting process, and this will make the server hang after the next reboot. This is probably not what server users want.

In addition, I think this behavior is not ideal for desktop users either, because (1) spurious errors can also happen in desktop and in that case waiting a few seconds is better than waiting indefinitely, and (2) it is not uncommon to use Wake-on-LAN nowadays.

But I'm not sure this problem is unique to Ubuntu, as Ubuntu shares much of its codebase with Debian. Does anybody know this is also problematic in other distributions?

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jhasse 3949 days ago
It looks like this will be fixed in 15.10: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=ubuntu-15...
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beagle3 3949 days ago
When I checked (in 2013), Ubuntu had this problem, and Debian did not.

Ubuntu shares a lot with debian, but grub configuration is one thing that Ubuntu appear to be doing on their own.

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mdeslaur 3949 days ago
That bug was fixed in all releases last july. This was the bug:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/grub2/+bug/1443735

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beagle3 3949 days ago
Thanks. I guess it didn't modify my /etc/default/grub (which I would have noticed) because I already added it myself.

The problem was found (and a fix committed to proposed) in june 2012, but only applied (in -updates) in july 2015. I find that weird, to say the least.

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jokr004 3949 days ago
This was such a thorn in my side back in the day. So many unnecessary trips down to the server room to kick over someone's box that was hung.
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