Headless Ubuntu server machine sometimes stuck at GRUB menu

http://serverfault.com/questions/243343/headless-ubuntu-server-machine-sometimes-stuck-at-grub-menu

I have Ubuntu 10.10 Server installed on a single-board machine in a semi-embedded environment; no keyboard or screen, just SSH access to it.

So it's really frustrating when it occasionally boots up and gets stuck on the GRUB menu, waiting for a keystroke to select the first option.

How do I configure GRUB to under no circumstances wait for a keystroke?

Thanks!

--

Edit to add: There is no menu.lst, since this is GRUB 2. But I do have an /etc/default/grub which is like so:

GRUB_DEFAULT=0
#GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT=0
GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT_QUIET=true
GRUB_TIMEOUT=2
GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR=`lsb_release -i -s 2> /dev/null || echo Debian`
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=""

--

Edit to solve: I figured it out. On boots which follow unsuccessful boots, GRUB disables its own timeout. Since showing the menu makes a boot unsuccessful, this is an inescapable loop. This behaviour may be disabled by editing the /etc/grub.d/00_header file, and changing the make_timeout function:

make_timeout ()
{
    echo "set timeout=0"
}

Now exit and re-run the grub configuration updater script:

sudo update-grub2

It makes no sense to me that this behaviour would be the default for Ubuntu Server, a product intended for machines accessed by console.