How to change the timeout of GRUB Boot loader screen in Ubuntu 14.10?

Question

I use Ubuntu 14.10 virtual machine in headless mode and access it using ssh. But many a times it gets stuck on GRUB boot loader screen and I have to log in to the VM in graphical mode and restart in headless mode. But after some time this problem resurfaces, mainly when VM is not shutdown properly.

So I would like to set the timeout of the boot loader screen to a very low value for the cases when VM is not closed properly.

You may want to have a look at the following link: http://askubuntu.com/questions/121008/server-boots-to-grub-prompt-after-reboot I am not posting this as an answer since the GRUB-configuration in 14.10 might be different, but in general this is the same problem. — Kai, Dec 26 '14 at 11:28
Possible duplicate of How do I set the grub timeout and the grub default boot entry? — Organic Addict, Sep 03 '16 at 01:51

score 4 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 26 '14 at 13:12

4

You can read the full documentation here. In general it is two steps:

Edit the file /etc/default/grub as root (or with sudo) and set the GRUB_TIMEOUT variable to whatever you want.
Make the changes visible by calling sudo update-grub

answered Dec 26 '14 at 13:12

halirutan

264

2

Since Ammy6Teen mentions that this mainly happens when the VM is not properly shutdown you might also want to mention GRUB_RECORDFAIL_TIMEOUT= in your answer. This variable sets the timeout when there was an error in the last session (e.g. power failure). – Kai Dec 28 '14 at 17:01

How to change the timeout of GRUB Boot loader screen in Ubuntu 14.10?

1 Answers1