10 Using GRUB with vendor power-on keys *************************************** Some laptop vendors provide an additional power-on button which boots another OS. GRUB supports such buttons with the 'GRUB_TIMEOUT_BUTTON', 'GRUB_TIMEOUT_STYLE_BUTTON', 'GRUB_DEFAULT_BUTTON', and 'GRUB_BUTTON_CMOS_ADDRESS' variables in default/grub (*note Simple configuration::). 'GRUB_TIMEOUT_BUTTON', 'GRUB_TIMEOUT_STYLE_BUTTON', and 'GRUB_DEFAULT_BUTTON' are used instead of the corresponding variables without the '_BUTTON' suffix when powered on using the special button. 'GRUB_BUTTON_CMOS_ADDRESS' is vendor-specific and partially model-specific. Values known to the GRUB team are: 121:3 85:3 85:3 84:1 (unconfirmed) 101:3 To take full advantage of this function, install GRUB into the MBR (*note Installing GRUB using grub-install::). If you have a laptop which has a similar feature and not in the above list could you figure your address and contribute? To discover the address do the following: * boot normally * sudo modprobe nvram sudo cat /dev/nvram | xxd > normal_button.txt * boot using vendor button * sudo modprobe nvram sudo cat /dev/nvram | xxd > normal_vendor.txt Then compare these text files and find where a bit was toggled. E.g. in case of Dell XPS it was: byte 0x47: 20 --> 28 It's a bit number 3 as seen from following table: 0 01 1 02 2 04 3 08 4 10 5 20 6 40 7 80 0x47 is decimal 71. Linux nvram implementation cuts first 14 bytes of CMOS. So the real byte address in CMOS is 71+14=85 So complete address is 85:3