Grub does not allow choice

[joneall]

I just installed 14.04 yesterday and that went quite well, although slowly.

But when I boot, the grub menu comes up with an asterix next to the first entry, which is just Ubuntu, not Ubuntu 14.04 or something like that. And the up-down arrows have no effect on the choice, nor do page up-down or anything else.

If I do ctl-alt-del and reboot, then it seems to come up without the asterix and I can pick another system.

What gives?

[Snowhog]

It's how Grub now shows itself. Down-arrow and press Enter to see the 'other' choices.

[joneall]

It's how Grub now shows itself. Down-arrow and press Enter to see the 'other' choices.

Curious behavior. Especially without any doc. But, ok.

[joneall]

It's how Grub now shows itself. Down-arrow and press Enter to see the 'other' choices.

Uh, no. My system just hung (!), so I had to reboot. I got the grub screen with an asterisk in front of Ubuntu. The arrows had no effect whatsoever. Hitting Enter just after the down arrow booted Kubuntu. No choice possible.

[Snowhog]

Hmm. Is this a desktop PC? A wireless keyboard?

[joneall]

Hmm. Is this a desktop PC? A wireless keyboard?

Desktop with USB keyboard. Never gave me any trouble before I installed 14.04.

[joneall]

Getting curiouser...

Curiously enough, on the grub screen, the left and right arrows stop the countdown. So it seems the system does detect the keyboard.

However, the up-down arrows have no result whatsoever.

This keeps me from reaching my backup 13.04 system. This is quite annoying since 14.04 hangs after a while See

https://www.kubuntuforums.net/showth...567#post349567

[BobTreat]

The asterisk goes with the highlighted choice. If choices are presented then you have choice, seems your issue is navigation. I know this doesn't solve anything. I would try to reisntall grub after I performed a sudo dpkg --configure -a to rule out or fix any broken packages.

[JillSwift]

IIRC the asterisk means "This is what I'm about to start". <Esc> should turn on the menu. I think this was implemented by someone who has cats. (Anti accidental keyboard input.)

[Frank616]

I noticed the lack of choice in the default GRUB screen as well, however, my arrow keys work (old machine with PS-2 keyboard). I can use the arrow keys to get the list of bootable kernels, which I now HAVE to do as unfortunately, GRUB selects the 12.04 kernel by default, and the 12.04 kernel hangs partway through the boot. I have to boot again, choose the options and select the 14.04 kernel. Then it works.

I was going to try sudo update-grub, but I hate to mess with it, as at least the machine works at this point. I could also purge the old kernel, but again, I'd hate to break this still rather experimental install (I did an 'in place' upgrade on this machine).

Suggestions?

Frank.

[joneall]

Grub ok

I've never had any pb with updating grub, so I don't think you should worry about that. Do delete your old distribs first tho.

Yes, my grub list looks fine, but my keyboard is blocked. HOWEVER, I have found that if I enter ctl-P, it unblocks the keyboard.

I do not think this is a grub thing. I have the same pb if I select the BIOS option to choose the boot device. I can not use the arrow keys to select a device until I have entered ctl-P. On the other hand, if I first go into BIOS config, the arrows work ok.

Did I say bizarre?

[Frank616]

Teunis and others:

OK, got is all fixed, as noted in the thread here.

Seems my 'in place' upgrade had a number of issues, GRUB and the old kernel being but one of them.

Frank.

[Frank616]

Teunis:

and you were worried about update-grub

Yeah, makes no sense, does it?

I have used that arcane command in the past, so I know it works several kinds of magic. I knew also from your post, and some others, that I was going to have to run update-grub AFTER removing the old kernel. I knew this command did both, so I gritted my teeth, and ran it.

It didn't boot. It came up to where the GRUB prompt should have been, then restarted. I figured I had cooked it at that point, and was going to reach for the 14.04 install CD. However, it came up fine the second try.

I am guessing that this second boot is a normal thing when GRUB updates during a boot.

Anyway, I hope that others find that convoluted command of value.

Reminds me of a competiton that 80 Micro (anyone remember that?) had many years ago -- to produce a one-line BASIC word processor. Talk about nested nests.... It was a beauty to behold -- once you had figured it out. And I actually used it in a PASCAL program that I wrote many years ago (after translating it, of course).

Good things can come in small packages.

Frank.

[joneall]

Good heavens! Are there actually people around who can write a (useful) program in Pascal?

[Frank616]

Joneall:

Good heavens! Are there actually people around who can write a (useful) program in Pascal?

Kind of dates me, doesn't it?

It was originally written for CP/M using Borland's Turbo Pascal. At that time, I had to write my own key polling routine as Pascal did not have one! The source code was very portable, however, so this 3,000 plus line program got moved to DOS, and later to Delphi.

Yeah, I'm that old.

I rather liked Pascal, a really excellent procedural language. Its 'virtues' compared to some other programming languages are laid out here. I also played around with C, and did some Fortran as a high school project way back when. C is terse and powerful, but uninitialized pointers can wreak havoc.

Our daughter was born in the early 90's, and family responsibilities required that I turn to other things. Just as well, as about that time things were moving to object oriented stuff. I never did get my head wrapped around OOP.

Frank.

Edit: Just pulled out the old source and counted it again. Memory fails me. It is actually about 7400 lines of code. A bit of a walk down memory lane looking at that. I even fully commented all of it! Bet I could compile it again....

-FB