Bug 145986 – grub 0.97-r2 no boot menu

• Product: Gentoo Linux
• Status: VERIFIED FIXED

[Description Joe Knall 2006-09-02 05:33:32 UTC]

since update to 0.97-r2 grub shows no boot menu;
sometimes it flashes up for a tenth of a second;
no matter what I provide for "timeout";
booting itself works, just can't select kernel;
that's my grub.conf, emerge --info is below

color white/blue black/light-gray
timeout 3
default 0
fallback 3

title  xen hda
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/xen.gz dom0_mem=98304
module /boot/linux-2.6.16.26-xen-r1-dom0 root=/dev/md2

[snip ... other kernels, other disks]

emerge --info:

root@gurke:~ # emerge --info
Portage 2.1-r2 (default-linux/x86/2006.0, gcc-3.4.4, glibc-2.4-r3, 2.6.16.26-xen-gagamux.net-20060831 i686)
=================================================================
System uname: 2.6.16.26-xen-gagamux.net-20060831 i686 Pentium III (Katmai)
Gentoo Base System version 1.12.4
app-admin/eselect-compiler: [Not Present]
dev-lang/python:     2.4.3-r1
dev-python/pycrypto: 2.0.1-r5
dev-util/ccache:     [Not Present]
dev-util/confcache:  [Not Present]
sys-apps/sandbox:    1.2.17
sys-devel/autoconf:  2.13, 2.59-r7
sys-devel/automake:  1.4_p6, 1.5, 1.6.3, 1.7.9-r1, 1.8.5-r3, 1.9.6-r2
sys-devel/binutils:  2.16.1-r3
sys-devel/gcc-config: 1.3.13-r3
sys-devel/libtool:   1.5.22
virtual/os-headers:  2.6.11-r2
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86"
AUTOCLEAN="yes"
CBUILD="i686-pc-linux-gnu"
CFLAGS="-O3 -fomit-frame-pointer -march=pentium3 -mmmx -mno-tls-direct-seg-refs -msse -pipe"
CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu"
CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc"
CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/env.d /etc/gconf /etc/revdep-rebuild /etc/terminfo"
CXXFLAGS="-O3 -fomit-frame-pointer -march=pentium3 -mmmx -mno-tls-direct-seg-refs -msse -pipe"
DISTDIR="/usr/distfiles"
FEATURES="autoconfig distlocks metadata-transfer sandbox sfperms strict"
GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://gentoo.gagamux.net:8080"
PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages"
PORTAGE_RSYNC_EXTRA_OPTS="--exclude-from=/etc/portage/rsync-exclude --delete-excluded"
PORTAGE_RSYNC_OPTS="--recursive --links --safe-links --perms --times --compress --force --whole-file --delete --delete-after --stats --timeout=180 --exclude='/distfiles' --exclude='/local' --exclude='/packages'"
PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp"
PORTDIR="/usr/portage"
SYNC="rsync://gentoo.gagamux.net/gentoo-portage"
USE="x86 apm bzip2 cli crypt dlloader encode fortran gdbm glibc-omitfp libwww minimal ncurses nls nptl pam pcre perl python qt3 qt4 readline reflection session sse ssl tcpd udev unicode xml zlib elibc_glibc input_devices_keyboard input_devices_mouse input_devices_evdev kernel_linux userland_GNU video_cards_apm video_cards_ark video_cards_ati video_cards_chips video_cards_cirrus video_cards_cyrix video_cards_dummy video_cards_fbdev video_cards_glint video_cards_i128 video_cards_i740 video_cards_i810 video_cards_imstt video_cards_mga video_cards_neomagic video_cards_nsc video_cards_nv video_cards_rendition video_cards_s3 video_cards_s3virge video_cards_savage video_cards_siliconmotion video_cards_sis video_cards_sisusb video_cards_tdfx video_cards_tga video_cards_trident video_cards_tseng video_cards_v4l video_cards_vesa video_cards_vga video_cards_via video_cards_vmware video_cards_voodoo"
Unset:  CTARGET, EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS, INSTALL_MASK, LANG, LC_ALL, LDFLAGS, LINGUAS, MAKEOPTS, PORTDIR_OVERLAY

[Comment 1 Gilles Dartiguelongue (RETIRED) 2006-09-02 05:39:45 UTC]

after updating grub, you need to reinstall it to the mbr, it's not done automatically so on next boot you will get no menu. Is that your problem ?

[Comment 2 Jakub Moc (RETIRED) 2006-09-02 06:53:42 UTC]

See above.

[Comment 3 Joe Knall 2006-09-02 07:05:17 UTC]

you mean
   device (hd0) /dev/hda
   root (hd0,0)
   setup (hd0)
?
yes I did, didn't help

[Comment 4 Joe Knall 2006-09-02 07:11:57 UTC]

solved!
it works fine with a different keyboard now;
strange, besides the grub problem the old keyboard worked as normal...

[Comment 5 Jakub Moc (RETIRED) 2006-09-02 07:42:56 UTC]

Heh, weird... Anyway, thanks for reporting back, closing.

[Comment 6 Trevor Taylor 2008-12-08 21:17:35 UTC]

In case it helps anyone else:

I had similar: I did an emerge update world, rebuilt kernel, did grub-install. When it booted it flashed up some message too fast for me to read then booted the default kernel. The first few seconds of boot the text was "garbled" then it would come good part way through the boot sequence.

Anyway, my menu.lst (soft link to grub.conf) had a:
splashimage=(hd0,0)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz
... line it it and I that file did not exist.
- commented out the splashimage line and now I have my menu back
- the menu looks different to what it used to so perhaps I had an image file and the update deleted it or changed the entry
- I think I updated from grub-0.97-r3 to grub-0.97-r6 but I'm not certain