No keyboard at GRUB loadup ?

[bdutta]

Hi,

Am a VBOX newbie. Downloaded it today. Long time VMware user though.

VBOX=2.2.0
HostOS=WinXP-SP3
GuestOS=RHEL4-U6
Sys=Intel Core2Duo 2.0GHz (Laptop), w/3GB DDR2 (hp 6910p)

Issue: At the very first GRUB prompt where it says press SPACEBAR to proceed, pressing SPACEBAR has no effect, infact, it looks like pressing no key (including inserting ALT-CTRL-DEL) has any effect. However, as soon as that times out, and I get the next prompt of choosing the OS image to boot i.e. GRUB boot menu, I seem to get to use the keyboard to change selection.

Severity: Annoyance, not severe, because I can work-around by changing default and timeout=0.

Anyone else faced this issue ? Is it known or has any VBOX specific fix/workaround ?

thanks,
bdutta

[bdutta]

To add a bit more clarity about the issue...

The system seems to hang at this point of GRUB load:-
"GRUB Loading stage2...
Press space to continue."

at this point, no keyboard input seems to have any effect, and infact the VM seems to freeze. However, after about 30-40 seconds, it proceeds.

I run the exact same image in VMware Server, and this behaviour isn't seen there.

[Sasquatch]

No problems with grub and keyboard on my system, Ubuntu 8.10 host, 9.04 Guest. I can scroll through the list of installed kernels just fine.

[TerryE]

?? Sorry but I use grub all the time, as well as going into the BIOS. I've never had any problem. However, you do need to give the keyboard control to VM by moving your mouse into the console window and clicking. The the guest grub loader will then receive the keyboard input.

[bdutta]

?? Sorry but I use grub all the time, as well as going into the BIOS. I've never had any problem. However, you do need to give the keyboard control to VM by moving your mouse into the console window and clicking. The the guest grub loader will then receive the keyboard input.

Well, today I measured it (with a wrist watch, so seconds granularity)...

after I get the GRUB prompt to press Spacebar to proceed, I immediately grant focus to VM (click inside VM window), and from that point, it takes about 51 seconds before GRUB proceeds. In those initial 51 seconds or so, any no. of keypresses (of course, including Space, CTRL-ALT-DEL etc.) have no impact.

Not sure, I am probably comparing the speed with that of VMware server, where I see no such delay at the GRUB prompt.

Thanks for the responses.

[TerryE]

This sounds more like a disk device polling timeout. I've had this sort of problem when I've cloned disks or changed the architecture, so the grub bootstrap is looking for the 1.5 loader on /dev/hda1 when this is now /dev/sda1. Have you just tried checking your menu.lst for integrity of naming and rerun grub-install to remake the grub 1.5 loader?

I do see a delay when I am doing a grub bootstrap but it's a couple of seconds.