Shutdown Menu - Reboot Selections

English Install/Boot/Login
#1

This may be a waste of time, because a quick Web search shows a lot of people asking this question, with few solutions being suggested. I’ll admit that it’s not a critical problem – more of an annoyance than anything else – but I’m curious if anyone else has had this, and has figured out how to fix it.

On most KDE/Linux dual-boot installations (including all of my other Opensuse setups), when you select “Logout,” then “Reboot Computer,” a little drop-down menu will appear with the same choices that you’d get at the grub menu. Normally, if I select Windows, I can go fetch tea while the system automatically reboots, skips the grub screen and goes straight into Windows. For some reason, that’s not working in 11.1 here at home since I moved it to a new hard drive. I’ve clicked on “other” in Yast’s bootloader configuration and have tried reinstalling the MBR and the bootloader, but that doesn’t help.

As an aside, I also no longer have the boot splash screen, but that doesn’t bother me. What annoys me is selecting “Reboot Computer” and another OS, only to return with my tea and see that it rebooted right straight back into OpenSuse.

For the record, here’s my /boot/grub/device.map file:


(hd1)	/dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD800JD-60LSA5_WD-WMAM9LW04495
(hd0)	/dev/disk/by-id/ata-Hitachi_HDP725050GLA360_GEA534RV0DJ4LA

The Hitachi is my main boot drive. Here’s /boot/grub/menu.lst:


# Modified by YaST2. Last modification on Sat Feb 27 18:00:59 CST 2010
default 0
timeout 8
##YaST - generic_mbr
gfxmenu (hd0,0)/boot/message
##YaST - activate

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###
title openSUSE 11.1 - 2.6.27.42-0.1 (default)
    root (hd0,0)
    kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27.42-0.1-default root=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-Hitachi_HDP725050GLA360_GEA534RV0DJ4LA-part1 repair=1 showopts
    initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.27.42-0.1-default

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: failsafe###
title Failsafe -- openSUSE 11.1 - 2.6.27.42-0.1
    root (hd0,0)
    kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27.42-0.1-default root=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-Hitachi_HDP725050GLA360_GEA534RV0DJ4LA-part1 showopts ide=nodma apm=off noresume edd=off powersaved=off nohz=off highres=off processor.max_cstate=1 x11failsafe
    initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.27.42-0.1-default

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###
title Debug -- openSUSE 11.1 - 2.6.27.42-0.1
    root (hd0,0)
    kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27.42-0.1-debug root=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-Hitachi_HDP725050GLA360_GEA534RV0DJ4LA-part1 repair=1 showopts
    initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.27.42-0.1-debug

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###
title openSUSE 11.1
    root (hd0,0)
    kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-Hitachi_HDP725050GLA360_GEA534RV0DJ4LA-part1    repair=1 showopts
    initrd /boot/initrd

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: windows###
title Windows
    map (hd1) (hd0)
    map (hd0) (hd1)
    rootnoverify (hd1,0)
    makeactive
    chainloader +1

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: failsafe###
title Failsafe -- openSUSE 11.1
    root (hd0,0)
    kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-Hitachi_HDP725050GLA360_GEA534RV0DJ4LA-part1 showopts ide=nodma apm=off noresume edd=off powersaved=off nohz=off highres=off processor.max_cstate=1  x11failsafe
    initrd /boot/initrd

… and here’s /etc/grub.conf:


setup --stage2=/boot/grub/stage2 --force-lba (hd0,0) (hd0,0)
quit

Please note that I use Windows so infrequently now, I may have had this problem all along and only just recently noticed it (I’m doing taxes and editing some music in Windows; the rest of the year, I never even touch it).

#2

On 02/27/2010 06:06 PM, smpoole7 wrote:
>
> This may be a waste of time, because a quick Web search shows a lot of
> people asking this question, with few solutions being suggested. I’ll
> admit that it’s not a critical problem – more of an annoyance than
> anything else – but I’m curious if anyone else has had this, and has
> figured out how to fix it.
>
> On most KDE/Linux dual-boot installations (including all of my other
> Opensuse setups), when you select “Logout,” then “Reboot Computer,” a
> little drop-down menu will appear with the same choices that you’d get
> at the grub menu. Normally, if I select Windows, I can go fetch tea
> while the system automatically reboots, skips the grub screen and goes
> straight into Windows. For some reason, that’s not working in 11.1 here
> at home since I moved it to a new hard drive. I’ve clicked on “other” in
> Yast’s bootloader configuration and have tried reinstalling the MBR and
> the bootloader, but that doesn’t help.
>
> As an aside, I also no longer have the boot splash screen, but that
> doesn’t bother me. What annoys me is selecting “Reboot Computer” and
> another OS, only to return with my tea and see that it rebooted right
> straight back into OpenSuse.
>
> For the record, here’s my /boot/grub/device.map file:

That was a feature of KDE 3, but not in KDE4. If you cannot live without it,
then request it as a feature of KDE4.

#3

Forgot to mention: I’m using KDE 3.5. And like I said, it works just fine on my other Opensuse 11.1 installations (which are all using KDE 3.5 as well).

#4

Don’t know about you, but this feature works fine here on 11.2 KDE4.

#5

On 02/27/2010 06:46 PM, ken yap wrote:
>
> lwfinger;2128082 Wrote:
>> That was a feature of KDE 3, but not in KDE4. If you cannot live without
>> it,
>> then request it as a feature of KDE4.
>
> Don’t know about you, but this feature works fine here on 11.2 KDE4.

How do you turn it on?

#6

If I knew that I could answer smpoole7’s question, it was just there with the default installation. There should be a down arrow on the reboot button. If you click and hold the button a dropdown list appears with the OSes you can reboot to. Do you not have it?

#7

On 02/27/2010 07:26 PM, ken yap wrote:
>
> If I knew that I could answer smpoole7’s question, it was just there
> with the default installation. There should be a down arrow on the
> reboot button. If you click and hold the button a dropdown list appears
> with the OSes you can reboot to. Do you not have it?

Yes, that one is there. What is missing is the choice within the primary “Leave”
menu, which was there in KDE3.5.

#8

I have the same problem as the OP since I’ve updated to KDE4.4. Although I select ‘Windows 7’ as the system to start up after reboot, I end up at the grub menu again and start OpenSuse after a few seconds…

Not a severe bug, but sucks if I forget that it doesn’t work anymore… :wink:

#9

I’m curious: do you have two hard drives? Better yet, is it a mix of PATA and SATA, with Opensuse on one, and an older Windows installation on the second? That’s what I have, and judging from the occasional posts for help in this forum, Opensuse just has problems with that in general.

Now that I think about it, I’ve remembered something: when I installed that new Hitachi SATA, I used the Parted Magic CD to migrate the Opensuse from the old drive to the new, but I left Windows on the old one. I had trouble getting it to boot at all to start with, but did something to fix it … and I remember now that the boot menu on logout wasn’t working at that time.

Don’t know what difference that makes, but in the interest of full disclosure, the problem did NOT occur after a fresh install of Opensuse.

#10

Hi,
I have similar problem. After installation opensuse 11.2 I also have possibility to choose which OS I want run after reboot. Some weeks ago I noticed that I have no longer this small arrow and I don’t know why. Maybe some updates? Anyone know where can I enable this feature? I’d very appreciate.

#11

Sorry to jump in here after so long, but in case someone hits this in a Web search: I’ve determined that my issue IS the mix of hard drives, one SATA and one PATA.

Don’t ask me why, but that’s what I believe the problem is.

#12

There is another way to reboot directly into a different OS. I suggest you look at the following thread.

Reboot from CLI to selective partitions

There is a nice Wiki on the subject at:

User:Oldcpu/pbs - openSUSE

At this location you will find the final suggested script file you can use to automate the OS selection.

Thank You,

#13

James,

Nope. Doesn’t work. “grubonce” reports that it has selected “option 4 - Windows” (which is correct on my system), but it rebooted right back into OpenSuSE 11.1 and KDE 3.5. That makes sense if you think about it, because the KDE drop-down menu probably just uses “grubonce” (or something like that) behind the scenes to set up the (re)boot. Like I said, I think it has to do with the mix of SATA and PATA. It’s not a big enough problem (and I just don’t have the time) to justify digging into the code to see if I can figure it out.

I’m going to do the Big Upgrade to 11.3/KDE 4 this weekend. We’ll see what happens then.

#14

So smpoole7, if you look at the folder /boot/grub do you see a file called “default”? Its size should be 10 bytes (10 B) and if you were to open it up with a text editor, you would normally see a single digit number like “0” as the first and only visible entry. If for some reason this file did not exist, you could create a text file there as root were the first line said “0” and then you pressed enter 9 times (one line with 0 and eight more lines that are blank) and then saved the file.

Thank You,

#15

Yep, it’s there, and it’s 10 bytes long. (Well … it was; read on.) The contents to start with were “16388” in ASCII, padded with ASCII 0x0A to 10 bytes.

Immediately after running “grubonce 4,” it still said “16388.” I manually edited it to say “4,” was careful to keep it exactly the same size (10 bytes), rebooted … and came right back into OpenSuse.

I did another Web search, saw where some Red Hat folks were complaining the grubonce doesn’t always work, so I used “grub-set-default 4.” Now the file contained, “4,” followed by several lines with “#” (obviously comments) and a final warning not to manually edit the file, but to only to use “grub-set-default” to do so. The size was considerably larger than 10 bytes, but I figured, what the heck.

I rebooted … and went right back into OpenSUSE.

Truly, this isn’t that big of a deal. Like I said, I’m going to see what happens when I upgrade to 11.3 this weekend. I’ve had problems in the past with a number of distributions being confused by two hard drives, especially if one is SATA and one is PATA. Maybe the wrinkles are finally being worked out.