How to have a custom Grub2 menu that is maintenance free

[Cavsfan]

Utopic Unicorn with grub version 2.02~beta2-14:



I'll try to update the wiki as soon as I can. However sometimes real life interferes.

[Cavsfan]

This has to be the coolest grub screen I've made so far or even seen. This is on Trusty.

The timeout is set to 60 seconds and I find myself looking at it for a while when it boots up just because it is so cool.

[fantab]

Man I did not realize how behind the times I am.

Even back on grub 1.99 you could set the font colors outside the box and have different colors for the box and everything inside the box.

All of this time I had been advocating going with a 2 color grub menu with this in /etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme:

echo " set color_normal=light-cyan/black" 
echo " set color_highlight=cyan/black

When you could have this and go with 3 colors - one outside the box and a normal color for the box and a highlight color inside the box.

echo " set color_normal=cyan/black"
echo " set menu_color_normal=yellow/black"
echo " set menu_color_highlight=red/black"

So, you can either go with 2 colors or 3 colors.

Nice discovery Cavsfan! I have tried the three color menu and it works beautifully. Thanks.

A glitch: Remember I have created 'submenus'? Well, the three color menu scheme does not apply correctly to sub-menus on my system.

I have the following in 01_theme (I am testing this on Arch Linux):

set color_normal=light-red/black
set menu_color_normal=light-gray/black
set menu_color_highlight=light-red/black

However, when it enter a 'submenu' theme colors are as following:

set color_normal=light-red/black
set color_highlight=dark-gray/light-gray

EDIT:
Screenshot1 (showing the three color menu).
Screenshot2 (shows the glitch in submenu).
(My apologies for the bad picture quality but I hope you'll see what I am saying).

If I use the older two-color menu theme, the setting is applied uniformly to both menu and submenus, but NOT when three color scheme is applied.

Can you confirm this and offer a solution or a workaround?

Regards...

[Cavsfan]

Nice discovery Cavsfan! I have tried the three color menu and it works beautifully. Thanks.

A glitch: Remember I have created 'submenus'? Well, the three color menu scheme does not apply correctly to sub-menus on my system.

I have the following in 01_theme (I am testing this on Arch Linux):

set color_normal=light-red/black
set menu_color_normal=light-gray/black
set menu_color_highlight=light-red/black

However, when it enter a 'submenu' theme colors are as following:

set color_normal=light-red/black
set color_highlight=dark-gray/light-gray

EDIT:
Screenshot1 (showing the three color menu).
Screenshot2 (shows the glitch in submenu).
(My apologies for the bad picture quality but I hope you'll see what I am saying).

If I use the older two-color menu theme, the setting is applied uniformly to both menu and submenus, but NOT when three color scheme is applied.

Can you confirm this and offer a solution or a workaround?

Regards...

I mentioned that I do not support the submenu concept. I would go with the 2 color theme if that is what works.
Feel free to figure out a solution on your own as submenus are not a part of this custom grub wiki.

Sorry, but adding submenus defeats the purpose of keeping the custom grub menu simple.

Regards

EDIT: You could look at the files in /etc/grub.d/ and see if one of them sets any additional font colors.
For example in Linux Mint there is a file /etc/grub.d/06_mint_theme that controls these font colors:

menu_color_normal
menu_color_highlight

If that file is executable and you have the 3 colors setup in /etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme, the menu colors in will overwritten by the colors that are defined in /etc/grub.d/06_mint_theme.

I'm not familiar with Arch Linux but it may be similar to Linux Mint.

[fantab]

I mentioned that I do not support the submenu concept. I would go with the 2 color theme if that is what works.
Feel free to figure out a solution on your own as submenus are not a part of this custom grub wiki.

Sorry, but adding submenus defeats the purpose of keeping the custom grub menu simple.

Regards

EDIT: You could look at the files in /etc/grub.d/ and see if one of them sets any additional font colors.
For example in Linux Mint there is a file /etc/grub.d/06_mint_theme that controls these font colors:


If that file is executable and you have the 3 colors setup in /etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme, the menu colors in will overwritten by the colors that are defined in /etc/grub.d/06_mint_theme.

I'm not familiar with Arch Linux but it may be similar to Linux Mint.

I am not trying spoil your wiki or its purpose.
(However I must add that having submenu is neither complicated nor does it need maintainence).

Thanks...

[Cavsfan]

I am not trying spoil your wiki or its purpose.
(However I must add that having submenu is neither complicated nor does it need maintainence).

Thanks...

You may have misinterpreted my intentions. My wiki is not about having submenus but your not about to spoil it.
That is what is great about Ubuntu. Everyone can modify or adjust anything they want in Ubuntu.
You can take my idea or someone else's idea and modify it to suit your needs. It's all free here.

I did however provide some help in the Edit I posted. Did you find any additional grub files that could be setting that caused the third color to be wrong?

You did say

Can you confirm this and offer a solution or a workaround?

But as I've stated I don't work with submenus and cannot possibly over any solution or workaround for your problem. That was the gist of my point.

You can enter this in terminal to produce the output of grub as it is produced by the command sudo update-grub.

sudo grub-mkconfig

That will produce a listing in terminal. If that listing is too long in order to be able to scroll back to the beginning you can have the output be in text format so you can view it later.
This will put a text file, the name is of your choosing in your home directory of the output of the command:

sudo grub-mkconfig > textfile-name

That may help point you in the direction of where that color is being set.

[Cavsfan]

I finished updating the Community Wiki with several things I've wanted to add and some I've wanted to remove.

I also added Utopic Unicorn 14.10 and the ability to add custom lines to boot Utopic with Upstart (default) and Systemd.
(If you encounter any problems booting with systemd and need to file a bug report be sure to add tag systemd-boot to the bug).

If I've made any errors point them out and I will fix them.

[Cavsfan]

It took me a long time, several days to figure out how to get Utopic Mate 14.10 to work with this custom grub menu.

In /etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme:

The first line below is line 165 and you place the 3 font colors after that line - nothing else will work.

    if set_background_image "${background}"; then
    echo " set color_normal=cyan/black"
    echo " set menu_color_normal=yellow/black"
    echo " set menu_color_highlight=red/black"

Also the font is in a different location for Mate here is the correct command to use only for Mate:

sudo grub-mkfont --output=/boot/grub/DejaVuSansMono.pf2 \
 --size=24 /usr/share/fonts/truetype/dejavu/DejaVuSansMono.ttf

These are the only differences between regular Ubuntu and Ubuntu Mate to get it to work.

[Cavsfan]

Still haven't figured out how to get Utopic Mate working after installing it from a new ISO. I got the developmental version working fine.
The development system had this file which the final version doesn't have /etc/grub.d/99_force_text_mode. I tried copying it over but that didn't make the picture appear.

The font colors appear but they are a bit oversized. Still working on it.....

[Cavsfan]

I finally figured out it was the font that prevented the picture from showing at boot. The font is in a different location than it is on regular Ubuntu or Mint, possibly others.
I added that to the other difference mentioned in post #258 above.

Here is what it looks like. Not too sure about the colors or the picture just wanted to prove that it could be done.



Here is what the default grub menu looked like on Mint. And again initially I selected Mint Qiana 17 and it displayed the Qiana screen with the 4 green dots but would never go any where.
I brought up a tty screen and it showed I was in Precise 12.04.5.