ubunut failed to boot - Grub2 recordfail FAIL

http://jwalanta.blogspot.com/2011/05/grub2-recordfail-fail.html

I have this headless, keyboardless server running on Ubuntu 10.04. Runs fine, but once in a while while there's power cut off the server still remains dead when the power is back. I connected monitor and keyboard and found that the problem is with Grub2.

Turns out there's a variable named recordfail which is set to 1 during next boot whenever there's some problem with the computer (like due to power failure).

Now if you see /boot/grub/grub.cfg file, it has the following lines:

if [ ${recordfail} = 1 ]; then
set timeout=-1
else
set timeout=10
fi
Which means, the timeout counter is disabled whenever the recordfail variable is set. This is nice for desktop environment, which has a monitor, so I can see the Grub countdown is disabled so I can proceed with Repair option if I have to, but for headless servers the computer just sits idle at Grub screen, puzzling the poor sysadmin.

Fix? I changed the timeout=-1 to timeout=10.

Installing ubuntu 11.04 server via USBstick

The installer halts at "[!!] Detect and mount CD-ROM" - "Your installation CD-ROM couldn't be mounted. Try again to mount the CD-ROM? (Yes/No)"

1. When you get the error, Alt-F2 to a second console.
2. Find out which device your USB stick is (tail -n 100 /var/log/syslog)
3. Then mount it to /cdrom (mount -t vfat /dev/sd[abcd] /cdrom
4. Alt-F1 to get back to the install console, and try detecting again

***Make the startup USB disk writable when create it, it will be no such error after restart