grub: timeout doesn't work, needs user input

[ajayrockrock]

Hi,

This problem is driving me insane. I have grub loaded and it works fine except for when I reboot my machine it the "timeout" countdown doesn't work and it never loads the default kernel. It just sits there waiting for me to hit enter. This is my workstation at work, so if I need to remotely reboot my machine it won't come back alive, it's stalls at the grub prompt. Here's my grub.conf:

[pops45042]

Nope, that looks correct to me. Have you tried emerging the latest grub and re-installing grub on your boot sector or wherever you chose to put it?

Paul
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[ajayrockrock]

this was a 'stable' machine so I upgraded to the latest ~x86 version (0.96-r1). Then I reinstalled grub onto the MBR of the only drive in the machine and I'm still running into the same problem. Any other ideas?

--Ajay

[ajayrockrock]

btw, this is an AMD dual Athlon MP system and here's an "emerge info":

[gian]

I'm having the same problem... just do not understand what's the mater, tryied writing to the grub site, but nobody answers. I also have several linux boxes and only one behaves strange... it is the only one with an Ati card... but I doubt that is the problem....

[gian]

searching on google somebody writes that it is a problem with the way some BIOS initialize keyborad (leaving symbols in the stack...)

[Tamsco]

I think it is a Grub bug, but post here instead

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-122656.html
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[sdelcc]

Hi,

I have a similar problem with grub (version 0.97) , sometimes the timeout countdown doesn't work...
The boot stop on the message "press ESC to enter the menu... 1" and I have to push the "ESC" key and then the "enter" key to have the system boot...

Our menu.lst file is :

### BEGIN
default 0
timeout 2
# Hides the menu by default (press ESC to see the menu)
hiddenmenu
# Pretty colours
color cyan/blue white/blue
# default
title Embedded Gentoo, console serie
kernel /boot/bzImage root=/dev/hda1 noinitrd loglevel=4 console=ttyS0,115200n8 acpi=force
boot
# console vga debug
title Embedded Gentoo, console vga debug
kernel /boot/bzImage root=/dev/hda1 debug noinitrd ide=nodma acpi=force
boot
### END

Thank you for your help.

[shinobi.jack]

I have had this problem before on a headless server, but it turned out to be a hardware issue. The BIOS battery had gone flat, so if the PC lost power the hardware time was reset. This was some time ago, but if I remember correctly it seemed that the other effect of the flat battery was that there was an actual clock problem resulting in grubs timeout function not receiving any 'tics' and therefore not counting down. This is not entirely unlikely, as some RTC chips do require a minimum battery voltage to function at all... I am not certain that this will be of any use to the problem you are having because from memory I think that if I gave grub a key press to continue the bootup, the boot process may have actually warned me that there was a clock issue as well. Either way by replacing the battery the problem went away...

G
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[sdelcc]