[SOLVED] Fresh 20.04 Install On Old Apple MacBook - Change GRUB Menu Timeout?

[JeZ-l-Lee]

Hi,

I have a very old Apple MacBook which I installed Kubuntu 20.04 LTS 64Bit.
Everything works great, just have one issue:
The default timeout for GRUB menu is 30 seconds?
How can I permanently change the GRUB menu timeout to 3 seconds?
Let me know, thanks!

P.S. - Nice work, excellent release!

Jesse

[Don B. Cilly]

Edit /etc/default/grub
You'll see a line, GRUB_TIMEOUT=
Change accordingly (you'll be asked for the password), then update grub.

[JeZ-l-Lee]

Hi,

Tried what you suggested, still has same 30 second timeout on GRUB boot menu?

Jesse

[Don B. Cilly]

You did run sudo update-grub after editing it, did you not?

[JeZ-l-Lee]

Yes I did update grub

[Don B. Cilly]

Hmm. You probably have a GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT=0 line.
Try commenting that out (put a # in front of it).

I'd forgotten about that... haven't used grub for ages (I use rEFInd).

[JeZ-l-Lee]

Sorry, but I don't have a "GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT=0" line

[jlittle]

How can I permanently change the GRUB menu timeout to 3 seconds?

tl;dr:
As well as setting GRUB_TIMEOUT, set GRUB_RECORDFAIL_TIMEOUT in /etc/default/grub, and run update-grub.

Long story, from my reading of the scripts: Grub has this mechanism to avoid boot loops, where grub writes a "grub variable" to say the boot failed and when the booted system comes up it resets it to tell grub it booted ok. When grub starts, it checks for this and does a "recordfail" timeout if it doesn't see that. But, on several file systems (btrfs, cpiofs, newc, odc, romfs, squash4, tarfs, zfs), and with lvm or diskfilter (whatever they are) presently, grub doesn't have write access, so on EFI systems (idk why EFI) grub (stupidly, IMO) does a "recordfail" timeout every time.

[JeZ-l-Lee]

Hi, that worked - thanks!