Dear Maintainer,

After upgrade to 2.12~rc1-9 (from 2.06-13), grub menu is no longer shown during
boot. Pressing Shift key during boot does not help.

Browsing for some info I found

https://askubuntu.com/questions/182248/why-is-grub-menu-not-shown-when-starting-my-computer

where it is noted that sometines, auto loading of grub modules causes
race condition on slow PCs (this is a 10 years old box). To keep grub busy in
console and give enough time to load video modules, it is proposed to add

# To resolve race condition when loading video drivers
videoinfo

at top of /boot/grub/grub.cfg. Did that, and menu is shown again in graphics
mode.

Adding GRUB_TERMINAL_OUTPUT=console to my /etc/default/grub.d/local-setings.cfg
and running update-grub also makes grub menu appear, now in text mode.

Downgrading to 2.06-13 also makes grub menu appear in graphics mode.

Thanks for your work.

Regards,

Dear Maintainer,


   * What led up to the situation?

   Trying the netinst ISO and later installing from the Stable installer
   (which does not have this bug) and upgrading the system to Trixie.

   * What exactly did you do (or not do) that was effective (or
     ineffective)?

     Setting 'GRUB_TERMINAL_OUTPUT=console' in /etc/default/grub.

   * What was the outcome of this action?

   The GRUB boot menu is visible.

   * What outcome did you expect instead?

   Originally I expected the boot menu with the graphical splash screen.


The hardware in question is a Lenovo X1 Carbon Generation 3 with UEFI
version 1.34 (latest).  The graphical splash screen was only shown in
legacy BIOS boot mode.  It is not shown in UEFI boot mode irrespective
of Secureboot being enabled or not.  As noted, Stable version
2.06-13+deb12u1 does not exhibit this bug.

- Nate

Dear Maintainer,
I was not having the anything displayed, only grub loading the default
entry in hte background once the timeout of 5 seconds expired.

After tests, I sorted out that I did not need to add a full videoinfo at
the top of /boot/grub/grub.cfg to get the menu including the grub
background png back.
Add 'echo ""' at the top of the grub.cfg file is enough on my box which
strangely is pretty close to the other reporter of this bug. Ie a Lenovo
Thinkpad Yoga S1 from 2014. Core i7-4500U. I don't believe this bug
triggers on these Lenovo box because they have a slow CPU and about the
storage speed I have a fast Crucial SATA SSD instead of the original
HDD.
So probably a Lenovo EFI graphic bug or Grub being out of spec.
Graphic is
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Haswell-ULT Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 09)


For now I add my empty string echo to /etc/grub.d/00_header.
"
export TEXTDOMAIN=grub
export TEXTDOMAINDIR="${datarootdir}/locale"

. "$pkgdatadir/grub-mkconfig_lib"

echo "echo \"\""

# Do this as early as possible, since other commands might depend on it.
# (e.g. the `loadfont' command might need lvm or raid modules)
for i in ${GRUB_PRELOAD_MODULES} ; do
  echo "insmod $i"
done
"
and all is fine.
With this hack I can use GRUB_GFXMODE=1920x1080x32
or 1280x1024x32 and get the grub boot menu with background graphics to
show up.
Otherwise the menu only shows up if I uncomment "GRUB_TERMINAL=console"
from /etc/default/grub.

My root FS is on a btrfs @rootfs subvolume per Debian specs. /boot is
not a separate partition.


I had not noticed this grub menu regression for a while since I switched
to systemd-boot on this box as my main boot menu. While migrating SSD I
tested every entries including the grub one and found this issue existed
on my box.

Could adding this empty string echo to 00_header be acceptable for now?
Could you report this issue upstream?

Cheers,
Alban

I nailed down that the echo (even of an empty string) has to be before
"terminal_output gfxterm". Once it is after the "terminal_output
gfxterm" instruction, the menu and background do not shows up.

Note: I also tried "GRUB_TIMEOUT_STYLE=menu" in /etc/default/grub
followed by update-grub and it did not help with this issue.

Cheers
Alban
default
at
which
Lenovo
the
Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 09)
it.
to
"GRUB_TERMINAL=console"
switched
I
existed
now?

* On 2025 14 Mar 22:16 -0500, alban.browaeys@gmail.com wrote:

Hi Alban.

With the Trixie release I revisited this on my laptop.  As grub was
still active and would boot into Trixie as the default OS, I followed the
instructions at https://wiki.debian.org/GrubEFIReinstall to reinstall
grub-efi with no change.

I added the echo line to 00_header.sh as you suggested in your prior
mail and the grub menu is now in graphics mode showing the new Trixie
background.

Thank you very much!

- Nate

I noticed this today on my (old) Fujitsu Lifebook A512 laptop when booting
Debian 13.1.0 KDE live image:
https://youtu.be/j8xbkODDlQE?si=piQjz8ryLj1eeROP

The 12.11.0 (XFCE) live image works fine:
https://youtu.be/dS3GMgX2w4Q?si=KpoCntSowWXKDCDi

FWIW, the display hardware on this system is:
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 3rd Gen Core processor
Graphics Controller (rev 09)

Perhaps this regression should be mentioned in install manual or release
notes? This might be important in the correct of campaigns such as "End of
10".

Or better yet, fixed ;-)


regards,
Marcin