How to have a custom Grub2 menu that is maintenance free

[von Stalhein]

You are welcome!
So, you did get it corrected?

Yep, all good now.

[Cavsfan]

My first grub screen on Wily Werewolf 15.04.

I like this blue circle wallpaper pretty much.
It has these font colors:

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

[Cavsfan]

You are welcome!
So, you did get it corrected?

Yep, all good now.

Fantastical! Glad to hear that! I guess we posted about the same time so I did not see this until today.

[Cavsfan]

I actually got Arch Linux installed and added to my custom entries. I just looked at the grub.cfg file and figured out how to do it and it worked.

menuentry "Arch Linux" {
    set root=(hd0,3)
        linux /boot/vmlinuz-linux root=/dev/sda3 rw quiet
        initrd /boot/initramfs-linux.img
}

This will boot Arch Linux believe it or not.

Something else I have come to understand (at least on non-SSD drives) is that grub only recognizes 4 partitions whether they are physical or if 3 are physical and the 4th is an extended partition.
It will recognize the 1st logical partition but beyond that it fails to see the rest. I've been though my share of multiple OSs and how Grub2 reacts to them.

So, my 5th logical partition appears to be on /dev/sda7 or that is what grub shows at bootup but if you edit the line this is pointing to the correct partition set root=(hd0,7).
But the line below that has /dev/sda2 and that will appear on every subsequent partition after the 4th one.
So without a custom grub I have to edit that line and change it to sda7 to boot intot that system. Otherwise you boot into what is on partition sda2 in tty mode.

Arch is quite the system to get installed but once you do it is sweet.

[von Stalhein]

I courageously did it in VirtualBox
Undecided on whether it's the way to go as a main dist though!

[Cavsfan]

I courageously did it in VirtualBox
Undecided on whether it's the way to go as a main dist though!

I think it's a little harder than on VirtualBox but I know nothing about VirtualBox.

That is great though! The more you get into it the better you'll like it. Took me about 2 weeks before I got my mouse wheel to scroll but finally got that working.

It is truly a custom system that only has what you put on it. I just went with Xcfe as my DE and love it. Nothing else compares.

Here is a screenie of my Arch Linux custom grub screen. I finally figured out how to add a picture for the background.

[von Stalhein]

Yes, definitely harder than putting it on a "real" partition!
If something goes' wrong you can just hose the install in the sandbox and start again.

It's certainly highly customisable and as you have no doubt sussed contains some tricks for the unwary, especially where it mightn’t be obvious what dependencies are required for some packages!

Enjoyable working though these things. When it's in VirtualBox you can afford to be brave And, nice pic BTW!

[Cavsfan]

Yes, definitely harder than putting it on a "real" partition!
If something goes' wrong you can just hose the install in the sandbox and start again.

It's certainly highly customisable and as you have no doubt sussed contains some tricks for the unwary, especially where it mightn’t be obvious what dependencies are required for some packages!

Enjoyable working though these things. When it's in VirtualBox you can afford to be brave And, nice pic BTW!

Thank you!
Yes installing Arch Linux involves installing the DVD/CD and then you have a text based environment until you get the system installed.
It took me about a week or more to get to where I could add a DE which I chose Xcfe.
I tried gnome, gnome-flashback-session, cinnamon and non of them worked; they had really big icons for everything and then it took me another 2 weeks before I got compiz and emerald working well.

I purged gnome, gnome-flashback-session, cinnamon which ended up purging xcfe4 and xcfe4-goodies so I re-installed them and everything was back to normal.

Surprisingly I could not boot into Arch except through my custom entry. Everything else failed.

[Cavsfan]

What I'm currently using to boot Arch Linux in 06_custom:

menuentry "Arch Linux" {
    set root=(hd0,3)
        linux /boot/vmlinuz-linux root=/dev/sda3 rw quiet
        initrd /boot/initramfs-linux.img
}
menuentry "Arch Linux (Recovery Mode)" {
    set root=(hd0,3)
        linux /boot/vmlinuz-linux root=/dev/sda3 rw single
        initrd /boot/initramfs-linux.img
}

There's a fallback and lts kernel but I left them out and this works just fine.

[Cavsfan]

If any one has installed Arch Linux and is insterested in getting a custom grub screen like the one I am currently using in post #366.
Just let me know and I'll explain how I did it.

There is no /etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme file in Arch.