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I've installed Ubuntu 15.04 on a Google Pixel 2015 Chromebook, but I can't see the Grub menu. At the time when I should be seeing it, all I see is "Booting from hard disk" and there's some distortion at the top of the screen (it would seem like a few rows of pixels) that lasts exactly the time of Grub menu timeout. So it's like the menu is there, but distorted. If I press a key at that time, the boot process is interrupted: it seems to behave like you'd expect the Grub menu to behave, except I can't see anything.

What could be the problem?

My chromebook uses SeaBIOS (http://www.seabios.org/SeaBIOS) to boot Ubuntu.

UPDATE: SOLUTION I am leaving this for those that may encounter the same situation I have. Edit your /etc/default/grub and make sure that the following lines are commented out like so:

#GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT=0
#GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT_QUIET=true

Also it's important that these two lines are uncommented:

GRUB_TERMINAL=console
GRUB_GFXMODE=640x480

I have a strong suspicion now that the last line was essential in fixing the problem. Don't forget to run sudo update-grub afterwards.

Caballero
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  • If you press a key when you think the Grub menu is showing but distorted, does that stop Linux from booting? – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' May 25 '15 at 21:22
  • @Gilles Yes, it seems to behave like you'd expect grub menu to behave, except I can't see anything. – Caballero May 26 '15 at 07:38
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    Edit `/etc/default/grub` and uncomment the line `GRUB_TERMINAL=console`, I think. – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' May 26 '15 at 07:43
  • @Gilles I've tried that, didn't work. I'm guessing this problem will be chromebook specific. – Caballero May 26 '15 at 08:00
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    Can we please salvage and re-open this question? SeaBIOS is used as payload for coreboot to boot in legacy mode, which is one of the easier and less invasive options to boot a non-Chrome OS kernel and distribution (see https://mrchromebox.tech/). This is a valid question about configuring Grub on typical distributions, I guess we're just not used to this problem anymore on standard PCs. I'd like to help out if there are open questions. – LiveWireBT Oct 23 '16 at 12:09

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