A Beginner's Guide to Theming GRUB2

[towheedm]

That theme at kde-look is for grub-legacy and not GRUB2. It is not compatible. Of course, you can take the elements of the theme (background, fonts, etc) and make a GRUB2 theme from it.

Have a look at this thread for a couple more themes:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1823915

Towards the end of the guide is a theme installation script which makes installing your theme quite simple. It starts on Pg 50 of the guide.

The theme format manual at grub.gibibit.com is for the most parts obsolete and not maintained anymore. It's good for a quick reference of the theme elements. The properties of the theme elements have changed considerable from what's there.

You cannot have menu separation as the one shown on the theme at kde-look in the GRUB2 themes. The most you can do at this time is to specify the spacing between menu items. You might consider posting a feature request to the GRUB devs.

[towheedm]

I have just uploaded the 3rd Edition to my guide. This now covers GRUB v1.99 for the following distros:

• Arch Linux 2011.08.19 using GRUB 1.99-5
• Debian Squeeze using GRUB 1.99-14 from Debian Wheezy
• Debian Wheezy using GRUB 1.99-14
• Fedora 14 (Laughlin) and Fedora 15 (Lovelock) using GRUB 1.99-13.fc16 from Fedora 16
• Fedora 16 (Verne) using GRUB 1.99-13.fc16
• LinuxMint 10 (Julia) using GRUB 1.99-12ubuntu5-1linuxmint1 from LinuxMint 12
• LinuxMint 12 (Lisa) using GRUB 1.99-12ubuntu5-1linuxmint1
• Mandriva 2011.0 (Turtle) using GRUB 1.99
• openSUSE 11.3 (Teal) and openSUSE 11.4 (Celadon) using GRUB 1.99-8.7.2 from openSUSE 12.1
• openSUSE 12.1 (Asparagus) using GRUB 1.99-8.7.2
• Sabayon 7 using GRUB 1.99
• Slackware Linux 13.37 using GRUB 1.99
• Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid), 10.10 (Maverick) and 11.04 (Natty) using GRUB 1.99-12ubuntu3 from Ubuntu 11.10
• Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric) using GRUB 1.99-12ubuntu5
• VectorLinux 7.0 using GRUB 1.99

It includes instructions to upgrade to GRUB 1.99 from the repos of the respective distros.
The download link is the same as in post #1:
http://ubuntuone.com/2EslXTLj5s2zzbeYKx17wJ

[luke91]

Looks like a great guide but I have Ubuntu 12.04 installed and the guide only states up to 11.10. Would the guide still work for the newest version of Ubuntu?

[towheedm]

Looks like a great guide but I have Ubuntu 12.04 installed and the guide only states up to 11.10. Would the guide still work for the newest version of Ubuntu?

Yes it would.

[hal8000]

This is a great guide.
I'm using Ubuntu 12.10 which now uses grub 2.00

After reading revision3 thought I'd try the script to install the demo menu,
however it fails will following error (displayed in red) :


sudo ./install.sh
Could not locate "/etc"/default/grub.

I have a feeling there is a problem in eiether the sed script to locate the patch as message shows /etc as /etc"

or is it because I'm using Ubuntu 12.10?
Thanks in advance.

[towheedm]

Could you post the output of:

grep ^sysconfdir $(sudo which grub-mkconfig)

Thanks for the feedback.

[hal8000]

Sorry for delay output from grep:


hal@Orac:~$ grep ^sysconfdir $(sudo which grub-mkconfig)

sysconfdir="/etc"

[towheedm]

Here is the patched install.sh script. There were several other changes to GRUB 2.00 grub-mkconfig script.

I've also included it in the main download archive.

[hal8000]

Thanks a lot Towheed.

OK, I have it working but there were a few problems.
First off I ran the new install script from my downloads directory
and it copied all the files from ~/Downloads into /boot/grub/themes/demo ?

I then read the document again and this time moved the script to ~/Documents
and it installed but again no theme?

I have a look at /etc/default/grub contents below:

# If you change this file, run 'update-grub' afterwards to update
# /boot/grub/grub.cfg.
--snip--

export GRUB_COLOR_NORMAL="light-blue/black"
export GRUB_COLOR_HIGHLIGHT="white/black"
GRUB_BACKGROUND=/boot/grub/themes/demo/terminal-background-workaround.png

GRUB_THEME=/boot/grub/themes/demo/theme.txt

#UNNAMED_OPTION=""
export GRUB_MENU_PICTURE="/boot/grub/themes/demo/demo/gnu-linux-color-wallpaper.png"
GRUB_FONT="/boot/grub/unicode.pf2"


From the above it became clear that there is another demo directory within demo.

I change the other paths to include demo/demo ran update-grub and now have the demo theme , but no icons.

I've had some practise with burg so am currently looking at this, for now
the contents of /boot/grub/themes/demo:

ls /boot/grub/themes/demo -l
total 5612
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 608 Nov 7 17:13 00_header-01.patch
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4162 Nov 7 17:13 10_linux-arch-01.patch
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4465 Nov 7 17:13 10_linux-debian-mandriva-sabayon-01.patch
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4466 Nov 7 17:13 10_linux-fedora-01.patch
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4399 Nov 7 17:13 10_linux-mint-01.patch
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4602 Nov 7 17:13 10_linux-opensuse-01.patch
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4452 Nov 7 17:13 10_linux-slackware-01.patch
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4232 Nov 7 17:13 10_linux-ubuntu-01.patch
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4447 Nov 7 17:13 10_linux-vector-01.patch
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 12403 Nov 7 17:13 30_os-prober-01.patch
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 13497 Nov 7 17:13 30_os-prober-ubuntu-01.patch
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1646 Nov 7 17:13 40lsb-01.patch
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 5267 Nov 7 17:13 90linux-distro-01.patch
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 5303 Nov 7 17:13 90linux-distro-opensuse-01.patch
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Nov 7 17:13 demo
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 5600124 Nov 7 17:13 grub2_theming_guide_3rd_edition.pdf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 440 Nov 7 17:13 grub-mkconfig-01.patch
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Nov 7 17:13 icons
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 6376 Nov 7 17:13 install.sh


There is another demo folder which contains theme.txt so I was correct to modify /etc/default/grub

I'm not sure if this is down to changes in Ubuntu 12.10 but it is working and a very nice improvement over the default Ubuntu 12.10 grub theme.

[hal8000]

Hi Towheed,
This is a very good guide to theming grub2.


I have read the guide in Ubuntu 12.10 and am suggesting a few comments that may be helpful:

I'm using Document Read 3.6 on Ubuntu 12.10 at screen resolution of 1280x1024. The menu pages do not correspond to pages within document. These comments refer to pages in the document (not displayed by menu):


Page 34 Theme
I would include words to the effect of:

Each grub2 theme is selected by a reference in /etc/default/grub
Each grub2 theme is stored within its own directory inside /boot/grub/themes/



Page 38 Global Property
I would include another comment, words to the effect of:

Global properties are set defined by the file theme.txt which must be included for each grub2 theme.