Description of problem: If you set timeout=0 in grub.cfg, you are not shown the boot menu. However you can still display it (e.g. when you need recovery mode) by holding SHIFT during grub initialization. Unfortunately this doesn't work in Fedora. It works in other distributions, like Ubuntu. I vaguely remember I read something that stated that this shift key support is optional and must compiled in as a module. I don't know that for sure. But I know it should work and it doesn't. Please add shift support to grub, it's quite essential. There's no other way how to access the menu if you set timeout=0. If your default boot menu item breaks, you're in trouble. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): grub2-1.99-14.fc17.i686 How reproducible: always Steps to Reproduce: 1. set timeout=0 in grub.cfg 2. try to interrupt boot by holding shift
The grub.cfg generated by the grub2-mkconfig shell script from a-very-hot-place do not use any modifier detection. It is possible to use http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub.html#keystatus to implement it. If you manually edit grub.cfg in such a way that other manual changes are necessary then you are on your own. Instead I would recommend /etc/default/grub with something like GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT=3 GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT_QUIET=true - but you are right, https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Grub2 is still not at 100%, and Fedora grub2 do still not give a user experience that matches grub legacy.
On my custom live usb I now replace set timeout=... with if keystatus --ctrl then set timeout=-1 else set timeout=0 fi That gives a quiet instant boot unless I press ctrl. IMO that is a nice fit for EFI systems with a boot menu in the firmware.
This bug appears to have been reported against 'rawhide' during the Fedora 19 development cycle. Changing version to '19'. (As we did not run this process for some time, it could affect also pre-Fedora 19 development cycle bugs. We are very sorry. It will help us with cleanup during Fedora 19 End Of Life. Thank you.) More information and reason for this action is here: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/HouseKeeping/Fedora19
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I tried it with Fedora 21, and on my system pressing or holding the modifier keys during boot is not fully reliable. Still, it would be nice if grub supported this, so that interested users could easily configure it (in /etc/default/grub, not in the final grub2.cfg file, which should not be modified by hand, because it gets overwritten).
Grub in F29+ supports holding shift down during boot to show the boot-menu (when it is hidden), closing this.