GRUB-REBOOT(8)

💖 GRUB-REBOOT 💖

okay bestie, welcome to the grub-reboot page of the System Administration Utilities manual — this is the one that decides what your computer boots into exactly one time and then forgets all about it. chaotic? a little. iconic? absolutely. 🦋

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✨ NAME ✨

grub-reboot — set the default boot entry for GRUB, for the next boot only 💅

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

grub-reboot [OPTION] MENU_ENTRY

that's it. one little line. one big vibe. 🎀

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💜 DESCRIPTION 💜

Set the default boot menu entry for GRUB, for the next boot only. like, you pick which one you want this once, and after that it goes right back to doing its usual thing. no strings, no commitment, no cap. ✨

• -h, --help — print this message and exit. your girl needs directions? here they are. 🫶
• -V, --version — print the version information and exit. find out which flavor of grub you're dealing with. 👑
• --boot-directory=DIR — expect GRUB images under the directory DIR/grub instead of the /boot/grub directory. so like, if your grub stuff lives somewhere else, tell her where. literally just point at it. 🗺️

🦋 about that MENU_ENTRY though 🦋

MENU_ENTRY is a number, a menu item title or a menu item identifier. three whole ways to point at the thing you want. slay. 🎀

but listen — and this is the part where it gets a lil extra — menu items in submenus or sub-submenus require specifying the submenu components and then the menu item component. so you have to walk the whole lil family tree down to your item.

and the titles? they get separated using the greater-than character (>) with no extra spaces. none. zero. not one. so it's giving parent>child>item energy and nothing else. 😭

depending on your shell, some characters — including > — may need escaping, because your shell has opinions and will absolutely try to do its own thing with a >. more information about this is available in the GRUB Manual in the section about the 'default' command. iykyk. 📖

NOTE: In cases where GRUB cannot write to the environment block, such as when it is stored on an MDRAID or LVM device, the chosen boot menu entry will remain the default even after reboot. 💀 so you said "just this once" and it said "no actually, forever." check your setup before you trust the one-time-ness, bestie.

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🍓 REPORTING BUGS 🍓

found a bug? she's not perfect, she's just a grub utility. report bugs to <bug-grub@gnu.org>. tell them everything, they can handle it. 💌

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🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

• grub-set-default(8)
• grub-editenv(1)

The full documentation for grub-reboot is maintained as a Texinfo manual. If the info and grub-reboot programs are properly installed at your site, the command

info grub-reboot

should give you access to the complete manual. go forth and read the full lore, it's giving director's cut. 📚✨

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okay that's the whole page, babe — brought to you by GRUB 2.14-2ubuntu3, dated July 2026, because even iconic documentation has a birthday. mwah. 💖💅🦋🌸