One click shutdown Ubuntu and load into alternative bootup

I have a dual boot system with Ubuntu 11.04 and Windows 7.

My GRUB bootloader defaults to Ubuntu. I mainly use Ubuntu, but I occasionally need to bootup Windows to do a few things.

If I need to do something in Windows I can "shutdown" Ubuntu and select Windows 7 in the bootloader. However, it would be more efficient if I could do this in one click from Ubuntu.

  • Is it possible to press a key in Ubuntu which means "Shut down, and then boot into Windows"? (or for that matter Shut down and boot into any non-default bootup)

In case you know the entry number for your Windows installation (start counting with 0 for first position) in the grub menu you can reboot into Windows (assuming to be 3rd on the list) by this command:

grub-reboot 2

Alternatively you can also use the textual entry used:

grub-reboot '<type entry here>'

This command can also be put in a launcher for "single-click" usage.

To make this procedure work we need the entry GRUB_DEFAULT=saved in /etc/default/grub.


@Takkat has answered the question, but I thought I'd describe a few more details in case it might help others.

  • Boot menus count from zero. I have five elements in my boot menu. The fifth element is Windows, thus, to reboot to Windows, I had to issue the command grub-reboot 4 (i.e., not 5). UPDATE: see comments below about this possibly changing.
  • In order to edit /etc/default/grub I issued sudo vim /etc/default/grub.
  • To make the procedure work, I had to modify the existing value of GRUB_DEFAULT=0 to GRUB_DEFAULT=saved and then run sudo update-grub.

I then created a script based on the webupd8 example:

I called it winboot and put in in ~/bin

#!/bin/bash
gksu grub-reboot 4
gksu reboot