During a reboot, mysteriously, e-reader was installed before entering the grub-menu. I don't know what e-reader (or ereader) is and why it was installed all of a sudden.

I can't say much else about this except that I have booted this computer for years and never seen such a thing. I don't know much else about it because it happened so fast.

During the reboot, the e-reader installed and went to a screen that changed to different colors like a color test. After that, it attempted to go into grub-menu but hung for a few minutes (which also has never happened) until I finally did hard reboot.

I'm not sure what this is, I have tried searching the web on this but not found anything about it. The only thing I come across is Kobo's eReader which I think is something completely different.

One thing I can add is that I recently installed LXC just before. However, this was the second reboot since the installation. The first one had no issues.

I am on Dell Lattitude 6410 if that helps any. The operating system I was using when installing LXC was Debian 8.

That fact that this appeared during boot before the boot-loader seems very odd. Well behaved programs do not do things unless you ask them to. I think you are wise to be concerned, though I have no idea what might be going on. Here are a few thoughts:

Perhaps a look at the BIOS settings might reveal something. The fact that this appeared before the boot menu might indicate that it happened at some level below the OS.

If you are using a desktop environment that automatically places new programs in the menu, such as Gnome or KDE or XFCE, have you seen anything new in the menu?

Can you provide more information about this "e-reader," such as the precise program name? Perhaps running the command ps will reveal the name of the process.

Thanks for the reply, frankbell.

After looking through the BIOS, looks like I have something called Lattitude ON Reader which actually looks pretty interesting. Wiki on it here, which is based on instant-on, a pretty neat concept.

Dell Latitude's version per the wiki is based on MonteVista Linux (formally named Hard Hat Linux as per its wiki).

So it looks as though I could be able to boot up into this distro and perform read only tasks which could make my activities more secure.

Apparently I accidentally clicked the mysterious small button next to the actual power button that triggered the instant-on boot. I remember it being pitch dark when this occurred so I imagine this to be plausible.

Unfortunately, successive attempts have all been unsuccessful in getting this to actually work. When trying this, the screen always goes to a black screen saying that "The reader is not installed.... ~ Click any button to reboot and install ~."

There is a hang here even after clicking a button. So a hard reboot into normal activity is all I can do.

My next post may be about trying to get this to actually work as now I am interested in checking it out. But not any time soon. Just glad isn't something to worry about.