Make Grub Bootloader Wait Indefinitely for OS Selection

If you are doing a lot of testing of different builds, there’s nothing more annoying than rebooting and then having the system boot into the wrong choice on the grub menu before you have a chance to pick the one you want. Reader Victor wrote in with this tip: You can just comment out the timeout line entirely to stop grub from picking anything, giving you time to get your morning coffee.

All you need to do is open up the /boot/grub/menu.lst file in your favorite text editor (in sudo mode)

sudo vi /boot/grub/menu.lst

Find the section of the file that contains the timeout information

## timeout sec
# Set a timeout, in SEC seconds, before automatically booting the default entry
# (normally the first entry defined)
# timeout      3

Just put a # before the “timeout 3″ line in the file, then save and restart your computer.

Now grub will wait forever until you make a choice. This is especially useful if you want to prevent your computer from ever booting into Windows…

The Geek is the founder of How-To Geek and a geek enthusiast. This article was written on 07/25/07 and tagged with: Linux, Ubuntu

Daily Email Updates

You can get our how-to articles in your inbox each day for free. Just enter your name and email below:

Name:
Email:

Similar Articles	Featured Wiki Articles
Reinstall Ubuntu Grub Bootloader After Windows Wipes it Out Show the GRUB Menu by Default on Ubuntu Change the GRUB Menu Timeout on Ubuntu Select Text Vertically in Microsoft Word Clean Up Ubuntu Grub Boot Menu After Upgrades	Windows OS Code Names Get Diablo II Working on Windows Vista Why Codec Packs Are Bad Easter Eggs Tweaking a Dedicated Virtual Web Server Disable Smart Quotes in Word 2007
Latest Software Reviews	Quick Linux Tips
Parallels Workstation 2.2 for Windows and Linux Folder Castle 4.1 Wondershare PPT2DVD Sothink Video Converter for Adobe Flash	Copy Just the Last Two Days of Files to Another Directory Fixing Authentication refused: bad ownership or modes for directory Mounting a Shared VirtualBox Folder from an Ubuntu Guest Change the Hostname on a Redhat Linux Machine
Geek Arcade	Popular Forum Threads
Frantic Boxhead: The Zombie Wars BubbleQuod Exorbis 2	POWER ON SELFTEST (POST) DOUBLE BEEF SOUND ERROR, Help! Help! Help!!! Vista: Boot Manager Problem New computer with solid state drive (Solved) - Antec 900 optical drive installation

Comments (5)

1. December 25, 2007 2:54 am
   Adam

   That command opened it up in terminal for me and I had to scroll down the page with the blinking typing box and it wouldnt let me modify any values. I prefer “sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst”.

2. September 2, 2008 6:14 pm
   Steven Seagal

   Of course it opened it up in a terminal – it’s vi. You were probably not issuing the right commands – that’s why it wouldn’t let you modify any values. gedit is nice, but won’t work in a terminal-only window.

   For a simpler terminal-only editor, try nano:
   sudo nano /boot/grub/menu.lst

3. December 25, 2008 9:58 am
   Hariharakumar

   i opened the menu.lst file in text editor and changed, but i can’t save it, it says “You do not have the permissions necessary to save the file. Please check that you typed the location correctly and try again.”

   What should i do now?

4. March 21, 2009 9:52 am
   KAFYEKE Owen

   Ahhhh, that’s the tip I was expecting for

   Thank you “How to geek”

5. May 12, 2009 3:33 pm
   Luis Lumbreras Picazo

   First let solve one question asked on forum: Why can not save menu.lst -> you are not editing it as root user.

   Now, how can i edit it as root user? Simple put sudo before the command you use to edit it.

   I use to open it in a good looking graphical text editor the following command:
   sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

   Then when you select to save it will let you, because you are editing it as root (that makes sudo …; run commands being root user).

   Well, thanks for such option, but how can i put lines that makes nothing, for example just to have on screen:

   Ubuntu 9.04 Kernels