I reached the same conclusions: 1. The "Linux Vault" site is the only source I have found. 2. That the article in question is likely generated by a language model and the option is made up.
On Tue, Feb 10, 2026 at 10:54 AM Colin Watson <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Tue, Feb 10, 2026 at 09:52:41AM +0000, Mate Kukri wrote: > >Can you clarify: > >1. which documentation exactly refers to "GRUB_DISABLE_EDITING"? > >2. which debian / grub2 package version "GRUB_DISABLE_EDITING" is > >known to work on? > > I tried two different search engines and found exactly one reference to > that term anywhere on the internet (which is highly unusual in itself!). > I'm going to break the link slightly because I don't want to give it > more references, but you can remove the "XXX" strings from it if you > want to look: > > > httpsXXX://www.thelinuxvaultXXX.net/linux-security-hardening/how-to-use-XXXgrub-security-to-harden-your-linux-boot/ > > The term GRUB_DISABLE_EDITING appears nowhere in GRUB's git history, > neither upstream nor in Debian. I cannot find the term in any upstream > or Debian documentation. The way that the GRUB documentation documents > to disable menu editing is to set a password, as described here: > > https://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub/html_node/Menu-interface.html > > https://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub/html_node/Authentication-and-authorisation.html > > I conclude that either the "GRUB_DISABLE_EDITING" option was introduced > by some other distribution, or (much more likely) it is a fiction made > up by a large language model (LLM or "AI"). The web page on > thelinuxvault.net above has other structural features that suggest to me > that it was written by an LLM. It may happen to include things that are > true, probably due to copying from other sources, but in general you > shouldn't trust anything it says. > > -- > Colin Watson (he/him) [[email protected]]
