I am losing my mind trying to figure out how to troubleshoot this. I installed TrueNAS scale on a lenovo thinkcentre tiny, everything seems to work. However if I reboot without a keyboard plugged in, GRUB doesn’t display a countdown and will just wait indefinitely.
If I plug a keyboard back in, and hit enter on a selection, it will boot.
If I unplug the keyboard DURING the countdown, the countdown will stop.
This doesn’t seem to be a BIOS issue, I have no issues booting with a keyboard plugged in.
Why does GRUB require a keyboard to progress?
Is there a way to get logs from GRUB that would explain what is going on?
Allegedly it is a lenovo, secure boot, grub, bug. See if there is a different bios version available. Or reinstall after disabling secure boot. Or leave a keyboard plugged in.
I did try to upgrade the BIOS, same issue. Secure boot was disabled when installing.
I even tried to reinstall using Intel management from another computer using VNS with the keyboard unplugged, but nothing changed. One thing I did note was that the countdown WILL work with a keyboard unplugged while in remote desktop from another computer.
I’d like to find a solution to this, there has to be a way. Could I replace GRUB entirely with systemd-boot or something else? I know this solution would get nuked on update however.
This is linux, there has to be a way to troubleshoot this right? I can’t find any references to this exact issue anywhere.
I have booted grub without keyboard before. I think it’s the BIOS/UEFI.
Many BIOS by default are configured to stop booting if they cannot detect the typical HID (keyboard, monitor).
Many BIOS’ have an option to “ignore boot errors” or similar which will allow them to boot w/o keyboard or display attached.
Thanks, it seems like its a common problem with grub+certain hardware, unfortunately no BIOS options I can find will alleviate it. TrueNAS makes it very difficult to change and grub settings, as everything is done with a tool call Midctl which has zero documentation.