Take the 2-minute tour ×

I am running a dual-boot with Ubuntu (10.10) and Windows 7. Recently I edited my /boot/grub/grub.cfg file to only show one version of Ubuntu (as opposed to several kernel versions) and Windows, simply by commenting out all other menu entries. My question is if I can edit GRUB to just boot a specific entry automatically.

I tried removing all other menu entries, but GRUB still showed the menu with only one entry. I've also considered just setting the timeout to either 0 or 1 second, as this would basically achieve the same thing.

What is the best way to do this?

share|improve this question

migrated from stackoverflow.com Feb 17 '11 at 23:17

This question came from our site for professional and enthusiast programmers.

add comment

3 Answers

up vote 4 down vote accepted

The correct way to modify your grub2 settings in Ubuntu is by editing /etc/default/grub and then running update-grub (the file /boot/grub/grub.cfg is not meant to be edited). You can find more information here.

Using Ubuntu Startup Manager can be of use if you prefer a GUI to do the changes.

share|improve this answer
StartUp-Manager is obsolete, its development stopped <2011. StartUp-Manager is incompatible with Ubuntu 11.10 and newer –  Impulss Sep 21 '13 at 1:19
add comment

The Ubuntu StartUp Manager should do exactly what you want.

share|improve this answer
add comment

You could add following line to menu.lst:


this will hide the menu, and then maybe set timeout to 0 or 1 (I don't know how timeout=0 behaves exactly).

edit: oh yes, and set line


where ## is the menuitem number starting from 0

share|improve this answer
add comment

Your Answer


