Ubuntu – How to Enter Recovery Mode from Grub

There is a post on Ubuntu forums about protecting entries by password, basically to make the recovery menuitems require you to login as superman with password 1234 you need to edit some very hairy config/script files:

Add to /etc/grub.d/00_header

cat << EOF
set superusers="superman"
password superman 1234
password bill 5678
EOF 

Change /etc/grub.d/10_linux

From:

printf "menuentry '${title}' ${CLASS} {\n" "${os}" "${version}"

To:

if ${recovery} ; then
   printf "menuentry '${title}' --users superman ${CLASS} {\n" "${os}" "${version}"
else
   printf "menuentry '${title}' ${CLASS} {\n" "${os}" "${version}"
fi 

Perfecting protection is profoundly hard

Other things you need to do is to password protect your bios, disable booting from anything else than primary hard drive, and encrypt your root partition and mount any other partition as noexec. This still leaves lots of vectors.

Try opening a terminal and running

sudo chmod +x /etc/grub.d/20_memtest86+
sudo update-grub

Check to see if it's there

grep memtest /boot/grub/grub.cfg

Just done the same as I had it disabled

hob@hob-HP-dx5150-MT:~$ cat /boot/grub/grub.cfg |grep memtest
hob@hob-HP-dx5150-MT:~$ sudo chmod +x /etc/grub.d/20_memtest86+
[sudo] password for hob: 
hob@hob-HP-dx5150-MT:~$ sudo update-grub
Generating grub.cfg ...
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-24-generic
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-24-generic
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-23-generic
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-23-generic
Found memtest86+ image: /boot/memtest86+.bin
Found Ubuntu 11.10 (11.10) on /dev/sda6
Found Trisquel 5.5 (5.5) on /dev/sda8
Found Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (12.04) on /dev/sda9
done
hob@hob-HP-dx5150-MT:~$ cat /boot/grub/grub.cfg |grep memtest
### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/20_memtest86+ ###
menuentry "Memory test (memtest86+)" {
    linux16 /boot/memtest86+.bin
menuentry "Memory test (memtest86+, serial console 115200)" {
    linux16 /boot/memtest86+.bin console=ttyS0,115200n8
### END /etc/grub.d/20_memtest86+ ###

You could try creating the file if it's not there, using nano in a terminal

sudo nano /etc/grub.d/20_memtest86+

or with a gui editor

gksudo gedit /etc/grub.d/20_memtest86+

Fill it with

#!/bin/sh
set -e

if [ -f /usr/lib/grub/grub-mkconfig_lib ]; then
  . /usr/lib/grub/grub-mkconfig_lib
  LX=linux16
elif [ -f /usr/lib/grub/update-grub_lib ]; then
  . /usr/lib/grub/update-grub_lib
  LX=linux
else
  # no grub file, so we notify and exit gracefully
  echo "Cannot find grub config file, exiting." >&2
  exit 0
fi

# We can't cope with loop-mounted devices here.
case ${GRUB_DEVICE_BOOT} in
  /dev/loop/*|/dev/loop[0-9]) exit 0 ;;
esac

prepare_boot_cache="$(prepare_grub_to_access_device ${GRUB_DEVICE_BOOT} | sed -e "s/^/\t/")"

if test -e /boot/memtest86+.bin ; then
  MEMTESTPATH=$( make_system_path_relative_to_its_root "/boot/memtest86+.bin" )
  echo "Found memtest86+ image: $MEMTESTPATH" >&2
  cat << EOF
menuentry "Memory test (memtest86+)" {
EOF
  printf '%s\n' "${prepare_boot_cache}"
  cat << EOF
    $LX $MEMTESTPATH
}
menuentry "Memory test (memtest86+, serial console 115200)" {
EOF
  printf '%s\n' "${prepare_boot_cache}"
  cat << EOF
    $LX $MEMTESTPATH console=ttyS0,115200n8
}
EOF
fi

#if test -e /boot/memtest86+_multiboot.bin ; then
#  MEMTESTPATH=$( make_system_path_relative_to_its_root "/boot/memtest86+_multiboot.bin" )
#  echo "Found memtest86+ multiboot image: $MEMTESTPATH" >&2
#  cat << EOF
#menuentry "Memory test (memtest86+, experimental multiboot)" {
#EOF
#  printf '%s\n' "${prepare_boot_cache}"
#  cat << EOF
#   multiboot   $MEMTESTPATH
#}
#menuentry "Memory test (memtest86+, serial console 115200, experimental multiboot)" {
#EOF
#  printf '%s\n' "${prepare_boot_cache}"
#  cat << EOF
#   multiboot   $MEMTESTPATH console=ttyS0,115200n8
#}
#EOF
#fi

Make sure to run the chmod +x command on it afterwards.

I'd be a bit concerned that it's missing though - do you have everything else in grub.d ?

ls /etc/grub.d/


00_header        10_linux.bak       20_memtest86+  41_custom
05_debian_theme  10_linux.dpkg-old  30_os-prober   README
10_linux         20_linux_xen       40_custom