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I am connecting to my workstation over SSH (via VPN access) and I accidentally rebooted machine.

The problem is that I cannot connect to my machine because it boots to grub and it waits for interaction. The only option for me is to physically press enter key from my workstation. Unfortunately I am not at the place where my workstation is located.

Is it possible to somehow connect to my workstation at this stage of booting? I assume that no services are running but maybe there is some way that I am not aware of.

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I don't think you could connect to grub, afaik it doesn't have any networking capability. In the future you might be able to set your computer's BIOS to always boot from another networked computer? Or you could set up grub to have a timeout and a default action if no keys are pressed, might just need to add this to grub.cfg (apparently the top/first entry is 0):

set timeout=30
set default=0

But as for making your computer press enter now, right now, when you're nowhere near it, all I can think of is a telephone to call someone nearby to do that.

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  • Even when it's an end-user or the night guard, or the cleaning lady or the burglar: just call someone and have them press the key for you! (We've all been there!)
    – Fabby
    Nov 30, 2014 at 23:30
  • Thanks, I thought so. Better approach would be to edit /etc/default/grub and then update grub via sudo update-grub. I just wonder if there is possible way to connect remotely. Thanks anyway Dec 1, 2014 at 11:48
  • Love how we've all been there, remote machine that boots into the Grub command line with no way to access it, but no-one has fixed this in Grub yet. Wonder if there is even a bug report for it? Jan 23, 2021 at 21:51
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I'm not sure if it is possible without an additional interface like IPMI or iDRAC installed on a server. And the connection should be via VNC, or JNLP, or similar, not from ssh.

Also, check this thread: https://superuser.com/questions/183401/remote-control-via-ethernet-a-computer-from-boot-for-grub-choices-on-linux

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