grub.conf options

[Jonathan Ryshpan]

On Thu, 2009-10-08 at 12:38 +0200, Chris Rouch wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 12:09 AM, Jonathan Ryshpan <jonrysh at pacbell.net> wrote:
> > Where are they documented?
> > In particular:
> >      * What does the quiet option do?
> >      * How can I get the system to display messages during shutdown?
> >        rhgb suppresses messages during bootup.  Is there a similar
> >        option for shutdown?  If so what is it?
> >      * In my grub.conf, timeout=5.  Nevertheless the grub starts the
> >        boot process after 3 seconds.  What am I missing?
> >
> > Thanks - jon
> 
> the quiet option suppresses most of the initial output before rhgb
> kicks in. unless you're having hardware problems you probably want it.
> 
> i think the shutdown messages are still shown, but on a different
> virtual terminal. so <ctrl><alt>,<Fn> can be used to display them. n
> is probably 1, but i'm not certain of that.
> 
> try increasing the timeout and see if it's still 3 seconds. if it is,
> you may have 2 timeout lines, or extra control characters.

Thanks to all for your help.  I will now remove "quiet" and see what
happens.  I always try to get some documentation *before* making
modifications to important files so as to avoid unwelcome side effects.

But what I *really* want is to see the shutdown messages. They stopped
appearing when I upgraded from F10 to F11.  They are useful to me, since
the computer is on a small switched panel along with the printer and
monitor, which I turn off to save electricity when the computer is not
running.  When the shutdown messages were visible I knew when shutdown
was complete, which is when I can turn the panel off.  Now I have to
listen for a faint click from the computer's power supply.  Switching
windows hurriedly during shutdown is not a solution.

"rhgb" has been turned off ever since the graphical boot was changed (I
think in F9) to no longer use X-Windows.  Graphical boot is really just
eye candy, and doesn't deserve (I think) the time and attention being
spent on it and the consequent confusion that the changes have caused
users like me.

Thanks again - jon