How to enable boot timeout in Grub2?

Answer taken from http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1373965

at the end of your /etc/grub.d/00_header file, comment out the if condition except for the regular set timeout line like this:

#if [ \${recordfail} = 1 ]; then
#  set timeout=-1
#else
  set timeout=${GRUB_TIMEOUT}
#fi

run update-grub to regenerate the grub.cfg with the new settings:

sudo update-grub

reboot, now it should always boot the default option after the timeout, even if the previous boot failed.

The problem was related to a the grub env value: recordfail. I was able to resolve with the following command:

grub-editenv /boot/grub/grubenv unset recordfail

Another option that will guarantee the timeout will always work:

rm /boot/grub/grubenv

If you don't do this, grub might re-write the recordfail value. I needed this for an embedded system.

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