Every time I get a notification that there is an updated kernel to be installed, I install it. This behavior sometimes can lead to disastrous results -- unable to boot the OS. To get around this problem, I need to have a menu at the boot time so that I can choose an alternative kernel and boot from that. This is the reason I need the Boot Loader menu. I was able to recover from such a disaster at one time.
The Boot Loader menu is hidden by default for Linux Mint if the OS is the sole OS of the PC. This is true for most of the Linux distros. I reached this conclusion after many searches on the net. Once I realized this, searching for a solution to enable it was easy.
Turned out, that all I had to do was to create a new text file, rename it as a ".cfg" file, and add two lines of configuration to enable the Boot Loader menu. Here are the steps:
Step 1: Go to the directory - /etc/default/grub.d.
Step 2: Inside this directory, use the touch command to create a new file. Like this:
sudo touch 90_custom.cfg
Step 3: Using the following command to open the file to edit:
sudo pico ./90_custom.cfg
Step 4: copy and paste the two lines into the text editor "pico":
GRUB_TIMEOUT="15" GRUB_TIMEOUT_STYLE="menu"
The first line specifies the Boot Loader menu to display for 15 seconds and start up the default kernel if no action is taken. The second line specifies that the GRUB Boot Loader menu being displayed. The default behavior is to wait for the number of seconds set by line 1. If the user chooses something on the menu during these 15 seconds, then the GRUB Boot Loader menu will not boot the default kernel when the 15-second countdown finishes. These two lines are the most basic configuration to show the GRUB Boot Loader menu. There are more options I can specify in the file. You can find the definitions of these options here. The two lines shown in the previous step are enough to display the Boot Loader menu.
Step 5: Save the file ctrl-o to write, ctrl-x to close after saving it.
Step 6: Reboot computer and we will see the Boot Loader menu.
There are multiple config files (*.cfg) in the directory "/etc/default/grub.d". The naming convention for these files is starting with a number. I believe (I didn't look it up) the loader when executed will load the file with the lowest number, followed by the higher numbers until it loads all the config files. My file would be loaded at the very end since it starts with the number "90". Hence, the file I created will override the default behavior and display the Boot Loader menu.
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