[Bug 1438275] Re: GRUB_RECORDFAIL_TIMEOUT prevents servers from booting

[Steve Langasek]

The behavior you describe is the result of a deliberate design decision, not a bug.
 - A power cut after the system has fully booted does not result in a GRUB prompt.
 - A power cut before the system has fully booted is indistinguishable from any other boot failure.  The only thing we can say with certainty is that the system failed to boot.  We absolutely do not want to try to boot a second time with the same options without giving the admin a chance to interact with the system.

If a power cut on a *booted* system is resulting in the user being
thrown to a bootloader prompt, that would be a bug.  But that is not the
behavior being described here.

We are not going to degrade the experience for users who need to
debug/recover from a failed boot in exchange for optimizing for the
unusual case of someone cutting the power in the middle of the boot and
expecting a non-interactive subsequent boot.

** Package changed: grub (Ubuntu) => grub2 (Ubuntu)

** Changed in: grub2 (Ubuntu)
       Status: New => Invalid

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1438275

Title:
  GRUB_RECORDFAIL_TIMEOUT prevents servers from booting

Status in grub2 package in Ubuntu:
  Invalid

Bug description:
  On Ubuntu, if there's a power failure or the system is otherwise left
  in a bad state on its last boot, GRUB2 will just hang there
  indefinitely waiting for user input to select the kernel to boot and
  any relevant kernel command-line options. This is annoying since most
  of the test systems are headless so when seeing an unresponsive system
  the server operator have to go attach a HDMI display and USB keyboard
  only to find out there was no serious system error but just the system
  hanging at GRUB for whatever reason at that time.

  Michael Larabel have problems booting his Ubuntu server farm due to it
  GRUB being configured to use GRUB_RECORDFAIL_TIMEOUT.

  According to Michael - Ubuntu seems to be the only major distribution
  though dealing with GRUB_RECORDFAIL_TIMEOUT and causing the issues on
  the failed boot.

  If indeed Ubuntu is the only distribution with this setting, then
  maybe it should be changed?

  http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Ubuntu-Common-
  GRUB2-Issue

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