HOWTO: Grub Customizer

**drs305** · February 10th, 2011

Originally Posted by Objekt

I found a new toy. Jeez, now I'm going to keep rebooting just to play with this.

lol. Well, unless it's graphics-related you can see what's going to look like without rebooting:

Code:

grep menuentry /boot/grub/grub.cfg | cut -b 1-11 --complement | cut -d "'" -f1 | cut -d "\"" -f 1 | nl --starting-line-number=0

I just number them in the command's output for my own purposes - the numbers won't appear in the actual menu.

**jean noel** · February 11th, 2011

Absolutely brilliant stuff. Give that man another glass of wine.

**hariks0** · February 15th, 2011

Sub Sections:
linux - The 10_linux script. Listings of your primary Ubuntu OS kernels.
memtest86+ - The 20_memtest86+ script.
os-prober - The 30_os-prober script. Finds and displays other operating systems, including Windows and linux systems installed on other partitions.
custom - In a default installation, the first 'custom' refers to 40_custom, and the second 'custom' refers to 41_custom...

But I had renamed the 40_custom to 09_custom so that the other OS will be the first entry in grub even after any addition or modification of the kernel entries.

Will this work OK with this application?

TIA

**drs305** · February 16th, 2011

Originally Posted by hariks0

But I had renamed the 40_custom to 09_custom so that the other OS will be the first entry in grub even after any addition or modification of the kernel entries.

Will this work OK with this application?

TIA

You raise an interesting question. I have several custom menus. My preliminary testing of your question suggests that Grub customizer leaves these custom menus alone and, at least for me, doesn't even display them.

So the good news is that your custom menus should not be touched. The downside is that they also don't appear in the Grub Customizer display so you can't edit them from within GC.

I assume that if your custom entries are contained within the 40_custom file they would appear under the "custom" entry in GC.

**hariks0** · February 16th, 2011

Thank you for your kind reply. However, I had tested this application and found it working without any major issues. The default and topmost item was changed to Ubuntu though. As another surprise, Grub customiser recognised Burg manager and offered a choice to edit the Burg setup instead.

Now the topmost and default selection is the other OS in the beautiful Burg menu.

Check out this link if anybody wants to know how to setup a Windows entry that is always on top of the others in grub.

**drs305** · February 16th, 2011

Originally Posted by hariks0

As another surprise, Grub customiser recognised Burg manager and offered a choice to edit the Burg setup instead.

I have not used BURG but have noticed when I start GC it states in Help > About that GC is a graphical app to configure grub/burg.

**james.euless** · February 17th, 2011

I cannot get it to run. I get:

"grub-mkconfig couldn't be executed successfully. You must run this as root!"

I am using LinuxMint 9 (isadora)
Gnome 2.30.2
Kernal 2.6.32-21

Any help is appreciated.

**drs305** · February 17th, 2011

Originally Posted by james.euless

I cannot get it to run.

When you start GC, you should get a pop-up window asking for your password, just as you would when using any other GUI app requiring root access.

I get the same message as you report if I try running it from the command line as "grub-customizer". Try "gksu grub-customizer" or start it from Applications > System Tools.

If you continue to have problems, try running any other command as root from the command line and see if it works ("gksu gedit").

**geoffree** · February 18th, 2011

I'm running a 2 os system: Kubuntu and Ubuntu 10.10. Installed grub-customizer and was able to invoke it several times. However, after making a change in the resolution, to 800x640x2(?), the splash screen text which lists the kernels, was very very tiny. When I next tried to launch customizer, I got: "grub-mkconfig couldn't be executed successfully. You must run this as root!". I tried from the terminal with gksu and got the same error message. I re-installed it. I tried invoking the Great Wamuzygote. Nothing. What???

Geoffree

**geoffree** · February 18th, 2011

Originally Posted by geoffree

I'm running a 2 os system: Kubuntu and Ubuntu 10.10. Installed grub-customizer and was able to invoke it several times. However, after making a change in the resolution, to 800x640x2(?), the splash screen text which lists the kernels, was very very tiny. When I next tried to launch customizer, I got: "grub-mkconfig couldn't be executed successfully. You must run this as root!". I tried from the terminal with gksu and got the same error message. I re-installed it. I tried invoking the Great Wamuzygote. Nothing. What???

Geoffree

I tried editing the file thus: sudo gedit /etc/default/grub
There were three characters at the end of the file: = "" . I deleted them. Now the splash screen is fine; the resolution is readable. However I'm still unable to launch grub-customizer. When running update-grub I got an error message that followed the listing of the kernels:

"glibmm-ERROR **: unhandled exception (type std::exception) in signal handler: what: basic_string::substr"

What does this signify?

Thank you.

G.