Dear Gerd, Kevin, and Matt,
Am 21.04.20 um 14:22 schrieb Gerd Hoffmann:
I don't think this is a good change to make. In the event a user is intending to have multiple boot devices, but only one happens to be present due to a failure of some kind then the machine may incorrectly boot into the wrong device. This would make troubleshooting worse. If the user does not want the bootmenu then I think it would be best for the user to explicitly configure the machine to not present a boot menu.
Any further comments on this?
If not, I'm inclined to revert this change.
instead of reverting, I'd say just make it conditional on a runtime config flag, maybe /etc/boot-menu-skip or similar?
We have a config option for the time seabios waits for the boot menu keypress, so skipping the boot menu (unconditionally) can be configured already.
The automatic in this patch (only offer the boot menu in case there is something to choose, i.e. for example after plugging in a bootable usb key) is a nifty idea, but I can see the trouble-shooting problems this can bring (as outlined above). So, no objections to revert this from my side.
What do you think of extending the existing runtime configuration option `show-boot-menu`?
| show-boot-menu | Controls the display of the boot menu. Set to 0 to disable the boot menu.
0: disable 1: show unconditionally 2: show if more than one device is present
Kind regards,
Paul