Bug 800560

Summary:	grub2 does not use last selected menu entry
Product:	[Fedora] Fedora	Reporter:	Chris Murphy <bugzilla>
Component:	grub2	Assignee:	Peter Jones <pjones>
Status:	CLOSED CURRENTRELEASE	QA Contact:	Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	unspecified
Version:	17	CC:	dennis, mads, me, pjones
Target Milestone:	---
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	x86_64
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2012-04-09 19:54:40 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:

Description Chris Murphy 2012-03-06 17:53:43 UTC

Description of problem:
When using grub2-mkconfig, it produces a grub.cfg that does not save the most recently user selected menu entry. Instead it uses a previously saved entry which cannot be changed unless manually running grub2-set-default or grub2-reboot.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
Fedora 17 Alpha LiveCD
Also affects all of Fedora 16.

How reproducible:
Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Boot to GRUB menu.
2. Choose an entry that is not a recovery entry.
3. Reboot to GRUB.
  
Actual results:
Chosen kernel entry is not the default. Even after a kernel update, and running grub2-mkconfig to write out a new grub.cfg, the new kernel entry is not chosen by default and won't ever be the default, even after choosing it in the GRUB menu. A prior grubenv menu entry is chosen instead due to /etc/default/grub:
GRUB_DEFAULT=saved


Expected results:
I expect a new grub.cfg produced by grub2-mkconfig to save the most recent user selected menu entry as the default for next boot.


Additional info:
This can be solved by adding a line to /etc/default/grub:
GRUB_SAVEDEFAULT=true

Comment 1 Chris Murphy 2012-03-21 21:56:44 UTC

I think this is obviated by new behavior in GRUB 1.99-19.fc17 a.k.a 2.00~beta2. Plus grub devs told me that Recovery entries are exempt from being saved default.

Comment 2 Mads Kiilerich 2012-04-09 17:29:13 UTC

Why do you want / expect the GRUB_SAVEDEFAULT behaviour? Fedora never worked that way, AFAIK.

The /etc/default/grub in f17 grub2 do include GRUB_SAVEDEFAULT=true. It is however usually overwritten by anaconda.

I do however tend to consider it a bug that it is set in the grub2 package. It will only work correctly if /boot is on a plain disk without LVM/RAID and it can thus not be considered a reliable feature.

(Fedora should "normally" (whatever that means) select a new kernel version as default when it is installed. That seems to be slightly broken - but that is a different issue, right?)

Comment 3 Chris Murphy 2012-04-09 18:41:26 UTC

This bug should be closed, I think. I was basing this on GRUB 1.99 behavior, not 2.00 beta 2 behavior, which I vastly, vasty prefer. In fact I now consider grubby's behavior to be the "bug" as it litters the GRUB menu with independent entries, and makes things sloppy. Instead I think grubby should call grub2-mkconfig and have it write out a new grub.cfg after kernel is updated.

Comment 4 Mads Kiilerich 2012-04-09 19:54:40 UTC

Ok - then we close it.

The bug that grubby exists at all will be a separate issue ;-)

FWIW I agree that new-kernel-pkg invoking grub2-mkconfig probably would be a lesser evil, but I am also no big fan of having tighter dependency on the monstrous grub shell scripts and do file system probing as a side effect of package installation.

Comment 5 Chris Murphy 2012-04-09 20:14:17 UTC

Well in that case we need a different bootloader, if GRUB2 is seen as just too unwieldy and complex - a characterization I'd probably agree with.