I have been having some minor problems with grub2 lately - grub
is installed in /dev/sda the only HD on this machine.

When the grub menu comes up after a boot/reboot I cannot select
certain items as the selection bar just skips by them. Usually
I can select them if I start at the bottom and then they will not
be skipped, but others will.

Another problem which may be related - if I try to edit one of the items before booting, I get double characters (like ssiinnggllee).
This is a relatively new Fedora 19 installation, with a USB keyboard.

I updated the machine's BIOS in case there was a problem with it but nothing changed.

Could it be a problem with the keyboard I am using ?

Does anyone have any ideas ?

Thanks

You may have a corrupted GRUB configuration file. You could recreate your GRUB configuration by booting into whichever distribution that you used to install grub. Then run the grub-mkconfig command with the proper parameters. On Debian the command is:

grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

Then run grub-install:

grub-install /dev/sda

Fedora may use slightly different command names and file names, perhaps grub2-mkconfig, grub2-install, and /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

---------------------
Steve Stites

Well I would try that except the strange keyboard problem also exists in the BIOS setup, where the enter key does
not work to expand a field....whereas the plus key does.

Maybe there is a internal problem with the keyboard -- of it could the the fact
it's an HP keyboard on a DEll computer.

I am mystfied - I may get a new USB keyboard to see if it's the problem.

Thanks for reading.

hi

before trying your usb keyboard, ensure you tick or check the option to enable "usb legacy" in the bios

not all bios may have this option, I suspect really recent ones are already usb aware

I will check...but the keyboard problem makes it almost impossible to change anything in the BIOS.
As I said the BIOS instructions at the bottom of the screen say "Press Enter" to change configurations...
but the "Enter" key doesn't do that...I have to press the keypad plus key. Then it seems I can't toggle
or change anything.

It's wierd because as I first posted, the arrow keys skip entries on the Grub2 menu...and I have this
BIOS problem as well. At one point I upgraded the BIOS using Dell software, but that didn't change anything.

I am really beginning to sujspect it's some sort of incompatability between Dell's BIOS and the HP keyboard.

I asked basically the same questions on Fedora's user list but got nowhere.

Found the problem. It was a defective keyboard!