Comment 0 for bug 203385

Binary package hint: friendly-recovery

After upgrading a clean Dapper installation in kvm to Hardy, Gnome did not start correctly. To get access to the system I tried to boot in recovery mode, using the 2.6.24-12 kernel. This resulted in a graphical menu, which was supposed to give me three choices. Unfortunately, I could not control the menu. The arrow keys did not move between the three options, but simply wrote characters over the menu. As the default option is to continue a normal boot process, I was lost and could not enter recovery mode.
A second reboot in recovery mode using the hardy kernel gave the same result.
Finally, a new reboot, now using the Dapper kernel (2.6.15-51-386) recovery mode correct looking menu, that could be controlled with the keyboard and finally gave me root access to the system.

As the recovery mode is the last resort in case of problems, it must be guaranteed to work. If it is not 100% certain the menu can be controlled by keyboard correctly on all different systems, then in my opinion the "drop in root shell" option must be the first option in the menu, so it can be entered by just pressing enter.

The attached image shows the menu after pressing the up and down arrow a few times.