How-To Geek

i need to increase the grub timeout from 3 seconds.

the posts on this topic are closed, so i can't add to them, so i'm creating a new post.

the previous posts don't work for me because:

1. i don't have an /etc/grub.conf
2. i don't have a /boot/grub/menu.1st

so there's nothing to edit. or if there is, i don't know which one to edit, and i'm not going the trial and error route.

i'm using debian, if that makes a difference, i don't know why it should.

then, i have a complaint, and that is that the editor in grub should allow me to change the timeout and the boot sequence, and it doesn't.

what do i have ?

i have an /etc/grub.d directory, and
i have a /boot/grub directory.

and please don't tell me to edit grub.cfg as the first few lines of this file read as follows:
#
# DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE
#
# It is automatically generated by grub-mkconfig using templates
# from /etc/grub.d and settings from /etc/default/grub
#

i'd appreciate any insight into this. thanks in advance.

Why make this hard? Just install "startup manager" from the Synaptic package manager. And if you're using Ubuntu 12.x then you will probably need to install the Synaptic package manager itself to get it. Then again, "startup manager" may already be available for download/installation from the newer Ubuntu Software installation program - I just never looked.

Once startup manager is installed you can graphically point and click on things that you would otherwise have to edit. It is about as dead simple as you can get with GRUB. Startup manager not only lets you change the GRUB time out but it even allows you to choose the default OS as well as choose certain screen resolutions by merely pointing and clicking. I seem to recall that it even let's you change the background picture too!

Startup manager will also work with nearly any distro. As long as GRUB is the boot manager, you can use startup manager from within Red Hat or even a SuSE based distro to adjust GRUB things like time out, etc. Just why startup manager isn't included in every GRUB-dependent distro (since they all pretty much use GRUB anyway) I can't say; although I suspect it's due to potential problems a novice might cause from within a "live" boot CD (or whatever).