increasing grub timeout?

[John Summerfield]

Scott Robbins wrote:

> 
> 
>> I know all that, but several times in the past 24 hours I've found  
>> myself booting the wrong thing.
>>
>> Increasing _to_ three seconds? Ten is nearer the mark, I think.  
>> Especially for those of us playing with virtual machines and windows  
>> popping up and going away
> 
> 
> I figure 3 seconds as a compromise.  :)  Yes, I had forgotten about how
> many VMs, especially ESX (as opposed to ESXi) won't work with that--for
> those who run ESX in an enterprise, you have probably experienced the
> console not really showing anything or accepting keystrokes till the
> progress bar begins to show.
>  
> 
>> Too much bling at the expense of function, I say.
> 
> That's the argument we should avoid in this case, IMVHO.  (V for very). 
> I've just resigned myself to the fact that the desktop oriented 
> distributions all want to head that way and that it seem to be 
> what the majority of users desire. 


I support Linux, OS X and Windows. if there's a problem booting, I need 
the messages the user can't see.

Bling at the expense of function is exactly the term. A pretty face is 
all well and good as far as it goes. That's not far, on systems I 
manage. If The Boss has a problem booting his lappy (he runs OS X but 
never mind ...), there is some prospect I can fix the problem by phone 
if the relevant messages are on his screen.



> 
> At any rate, it's easy enough to change once one can make that first
> boot.  In this case, I'm talking about the situations where the user
> *must* add something to the grub line in order to boot.  Otherwise, if
> they aren't aware of how to edit before the first reboot, 
> some of them wind up having to boot with a rescue CD and fix it that
> way.  Yes, it can be edited before that first reboot, but with a target
> audience of desktop user, a relative few will look at the release notes
> or know how to do it, especially with the first installation of a new
> system.

Let me guess:
Always, "Oh, how pretty!"
Never
"What happened to all those system messages? Doesn't linux tell us 
what's happening any more?"

My wife, a kindergarten teacher, has never complained about those messages.


>   
> 
> 


-- 

Cheers
John

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