Ubuntu MATE: Unable to access GRUB menu

Question

I'm using Ubuntu MATE 16.04 on a ThinkPad X200. For some reason, I'm unable to access the GRUB menu at startup. When I hit shift immediately after the startup screen, GRUB loading (or something like that) briefly appears, then I get a blank screen, and then the normal boot process re-commences and I find myself with the normal LUKS password prompt (I'm using full-disk encryption).

I then tried disabling the graphical terminal in /etc/default/grub, but then I get error: no video mode activated, and once again it continues the normal boot process.

Here are the contents of my /etc/default/grub file

# If you change this file, run 'update-grub' afterwards to update
# /boot/grub/grub.cfg.
# For full documentation of the options in this file, see:
#   info -f grub -n 'Simple configuration'

GRUB_DEFAULT=0
GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT=0
GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT_QUIET=true
GRUB_TIMEOUT=10
GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR=`lsb_release -i -s 2> /dev/null || echo Debian`
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet systemd.unit=multi-user.target consoleblank=0"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=""

# Uncomment to enable BadRAM filtering, modify to suit your needs
# This works with Linux (no patch required) and with any kernel that obtains
# the memory map information from GRUB (GNU Mach, kernel of FreeBSD ...)
#GRUB_BADRAM="0x01234567,0xfefefefe,0x89abcdef,0xefefefef"

# Uncomment to disable graphical terminal (grub-pc only)
GRUB_TERMINAL=console

# The resolution used on graphical terminal
# note that you can use only modes which your graphic card supports via VBE
# you can see them in real GRUB with the command `vbeinfo'
#GRUB_GFXMODE=640x480

# Uncomment if you don't want GRUB to pass "root=UUID=xxx" parameter to Linux
#GRUB_DISABLE_LINUX_UUID=true

# Uncomment to disable generation of recovery mode menu entries
#GRUB_DISABLE_RECOVERY="true"

# Uncomment to get a beep at grub start
#GRUB_INIT_TUNE="480 440 1"

Solution

I have the same problem. You can force the GRUB menu to appear by commenting out the line GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT=0 or GRUB_TIMEOUT_STYLE=hidden in /etc/default/grub and ensuring GRUB_TIMEOUT is set to some number greater than 0.

So for example

sudo nano /etc/default/grub

and change that line to this:

#GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT=0

or

#GRUB_TIMEOUT_STYLE=hidden

make sure GRUB_TIMEOUT= has a value more than 0 (I can see you have the default 10 so you can leave it as it is, but in later versions the default may be set to 0), save and exit

Then run

sudo update-grub

Comments

[Alcuin Arundel]

That does the trick. Unfortunately it's not a perfect solution because you don't really want to have the GRUB menu come up unnecessarily each time you reboot. But the only way to keep that from happening is to uncomment that same line, and then you're back to square one.

[Zanna]

@AlcuinArundel agreed, it's not perfect, but I can't find any other way I can get the menu. At least MATE's GRUB menu is pretty...

[Alcuin Arundel]

What I've settled upon is to set GRUB_TIMEOUT=1, that way I have enough time to hit an arrow key and keep the menu from disappearing when I need it, but also makes the menu go away quickly enough when I don't need it.

[Zanna]

@AlcuinArundel nice :-) I just hit enter to get on with booting quickly