How to have a custom Grub2 menu that is maintenance free

Thanks deadflowr for figuring this out.

ChinaJustin, this should work on Mint as well. I'm not going to try this myself, but deadflowr has and it worked.
Here would be the 06_custom file for Grub 1.99 with just Precise and Windows or Mint and Windows as the text just displays whatever you desire:

Code:

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#!/bin/sh
echo 1>&2 "Adding Precise Pangolin 12.04 Newest Kernel, Precise Pangolin 12.04 Previous Kernel and Windows"
exec tail -n +4 $0
# This file provides an easy way to add custom menu entries.  Simply type the
# menu entries you want to add after this comment.  Be careful not to change
# the 'exec tail' line above.
menuentry "Precise Pangolin 12.04 Newest Kernel" {
    set root=(hd0,2)
        linux /vmlinuz root=/dev/sda2 ro quiet splash
        initrd /initrd.img
}
menuentry "Precise Pangolin 12.04 Newest Kernel (Recovery Mode)" {
    set root=(hd0,2)
        linux /vmlinuz root=/dev/sda2 ro single
        initrd /initrd.img
}
menuentry "Precise Pangolin 12.04 Previous Kernel" {
    set root=(hd0,2)
        linux /vmlinuz.old root=/dev/sda2 ro quiet splash
        initrd /initrd.img.old
}
menuentry "Precise Pangolin 12.04 Previous Kernel (Recovery Mode)" {
    set root=(hd0,2)
        linux /vmlinuz.old root=/dev/sda2 ro single
        initrd /initrd.img.old
}
menuentry "Windows" {
    insmod ntfs
    set root='(hd0,1)'
    search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set 1CFC7A8DFC7A60C6
    chainloader +1
}

---

With the only difference being ".old" at the end. I am not going to add this to the wiki but, feel free to add it to your custom grub if you want to.
You can see here from the symlinks how it should technically work:

Code:

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cavsfan@cavsfan-desktop:/$ ls -l | grep "initrd";ls -l | grep "vmlinuz"
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root  4096 Feb  7 10:57 initrd
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root    33 Feb 19 15:35 initrd.img -> /boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-38-generic
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root    33 Feb 14 15:52 initrd.img.old -> /boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-37-generic
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root    29 Feb 19 15:35 vmlinuz -> boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-38-generic
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root    29 Feb 14 15:52 vmlinuz.old -> boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-37-generic

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The previous post from Precise which describes how to be able to boot into the previous kernel appears to only hold true for Precise, maybe Grub 1.99.
I have been in Lucid, Quantal and Raring and the boot files all pointed to the same most recently installed kernel.
In Raring this is what it shows:

Code:

---

cavsfan@cavsfan-MS-7529:~$ cd /
cavsfan@cavsfan-MS-7529:/$ ls -l | grep "initrd";ls -l | grep "vmlinuz"
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root    32 Mar 19 14:29 initrd.img -> boot/initrd.img-3.5.0-26-generic
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root    33 Mar 19 14:29 initrd.img.old -> /boot/initrd.img-3.5.0-26-generic
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root    29 Mar 19 14:29 vmlinuz -> boot/vmlinuz-3.5.0-26-generic
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root    29 Mar 19 14:29 vmlinuz.old -> boot/vmlinuz-3.5.0-26-generic

---

Even the vmlinuz.old file points to the 26 kernel. You can play around with this if you want, but I am not going to invest any more time dealing with older kernels.
This may be why "ro single" will work for recovery on Grub 1.98 and 1.99 but, recovery on Grub 2.00 requires "ro recovery nomodeset" on the recovery line. (Thanks to Bogan for finding this out.)
I have never needed to boot into an older kernel so I am going to let this die right here. :KS

awesome, thank you very much for this!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by xraynetcontrol

awesome, thank you very much for this!

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You are welcome! :)

I installed Linux Cinnamon 14 Nadia and incorporated it into the menu. It also uses Grub 2.00 and worked well with this guide.
I'll post a screenshot later. :)

The only real difference in Linux Mint Grub I found is that you have to make /etc/grub.d/06_mint_theme unexecutable in order to get the font colors from /etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme to work.
Or else you will have your font colors at the bottom but, the menu colors will be white.

There are times when you have to be able to see where things in Grub are coming from and you can do that by looking at the output of sudo grub-mkconfig but, sometimes the output is too long to show in terminal.
I entered sudo grub-mkconfig > mkconfig-output to produce an output that can then be opened with gedit to view. It saved to my home directory.

Here is my latest custom grub2 menu on Linux Mint Grub version 2.00:

http://ompldr.org/taHZieg

That is the same Grub version as Quantal Quetzal 12.10 has I believe.
I like the dark pictures with the cyan fonts. :)

One final custom Grub2 screen with Lucid Lynx before it's EOL on May 9th.
This time they are all in sequence even though they are not in sequence on the partitions. ;)

http://ompldr.org/taTN0bg

Code:

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cavsfan@cavsfan-MS-7529:~$ sudo blkid
[sudo] password for cavsfan:
/dev/sda1: LABEL="C:" UUID="1CFC7A8DFC7A60C6" TYPE="ntfs"
/dev/sda2: LABEL="Precise" UUID="a162dc8a-e4df-4b79-b4c3-524761ff7ae1" TYPE="ext4"
/dev/sda3: UUID="2a80f59e-e7c3-418e-aab2-ab5d19255a2f" TYPE="swap"
/dev/sda5: LABEL="Linux Mint" UUID="b796e378-c9dd-4557-825b-5d5687197609" TYPE="ext4"
/dev/sda6: LABEL="Quantal" UUID="4d6a25ba-5a4b-4da4-8ae1-9939bc6b6b4c" TYPE="ext4"
/dev/sda7: LABEL="Raring" UUID="331d2bf4-1749-435a-a218-1c90dee537db" TYPE="ext4"
/dev/sda8: LABEL="Lucid" UUID="570f351d-6da3-4540-86b6-e12a400f7f44" TYPE="ext4"
/dev/sdb1: LABEL="Fantom" UUID="78B8D1A1B8D15DE6" TYPE="ntfs"

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The wiki will be down for a few minutes to update it with Raring Ringtail 13.04 which was released today.

Finished. Just made a few changes in the Editing /etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme section.