How to have a custom Grub2 menu that is maintenance free

[ChinaJustin]

I guess I don't need to keep 12. I made a Recovery Environment CD already if I really needed it, and I made the Toshiba Recovery Discs (with its wonderful bloatware) already, too. I just like to keep those partitions on their out of general principle and redundancy.

I'll just go ahead and take os_prober out of the equation. Hadn't thought about the fact I already have the discs if necessary. Thanks, oldfred!

[Cavsfan]

Thanks oldfred for pointing that out!

Right ChinaJustin. I believe making 10_linux and 30_os-prober both unexecutable and then sudo update-grub should do it.
This is from 1.5 in the Wiki - Final changes.
You can always login to recovery and make them executable if needed.

Also don't forget to label the drives as mentioned in 1.6 of the Wiki.

You can see an example of how that looks like on page 4 post #40 of this thread.

[ChinaJustin]

Yeah, I just tried the labeling thing... but it's weird:

/dev/sda1: LABEL="System" UUID="E034F94D34F92766" TYPE="ntfs" 
/dev/sda2: LABEL="TI106231W0C" UUID="32FC2690FC264E83" TYPE="ntfs" 
/dev/sda4: LABEL="HDDRECOVERY" UUID="38F653DCF6539948" TYPE="ntfs" 
/dev/sda5: UUID="14812599-e129-4ed1-8bca-ed5743b08254" TYPE="ext4" LABEL="Maya" 
/dev/sda6: UUID="6e9ac2d0-0427-43ca-90ab-24656665b14d" TYPE="swap" 
/dev/sda7: LABEL="Data" UUID="C61606BE1606B00B" TYPE="ntfs"

So it put my "Maya" label way out at the end... and when I tried doing the tune2fs on sda2 (to change it from the letters/numbers to "Windows 7"), it gave me:

tune2fs 1.42 (29-Nov-2011)
tune2fs: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/sda2
Couldn't find valid filesystem superblock.

Any way to get the label at the FRONT, and what does that error message mean? Any way to get it to work?

[Cavsfan]

Yeah, I just tried the labeling thing... but it's weird:

/dev/sda1: LABEL="System" UUID="E034F94D34F92766" TYPE="ntfs" 
/dev/sda2: LABEL="TI106231W0C" UUID="32FC2690FC264E83" TYPE="ntfs" 
/dev/sda4: LABEL="HDDRECOVERY" UUID="38F653DCF6539948" TYPE="ntfs" 
/dev/sda5: UUID="14812599-e129-4ed1-8bca-ed5743b08254" TYPE="ext4" LABEL="Maya" 
/dev/sda6: UUID="6e9ac2d0-0427-43ca-90ab-24656665b14d" TYPE="swap" 
/dev/sda7: LABEL="Data" UUID="C61606BE1606B00B" TYPE="ntfs"

So it put my "Maya" label way out at the end... and when I tried doing the tune2fs on sda2 (to change it from the letters/numbers to "Windows 7"), it gave me:

tune2fs 1.42 (29-Nov-2011)
tune2fs: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/sda2
Couldn't find valid filesystem superblock.

Any way to get the label at the FRONT, and what does that error message mean? Any way to get it to work?

The label normally displays on the right soon after you enter the label command and subsequently will show on the left, but that doesn't matter. It will only show up that way in the terminal.
The important thing is that it will be labeled inside Mint.

You can enter man tune2fs in terminal and it will show the options.
However it only mentions labeling ext2 files systems.

The only things you can label with this command are ext4 partitions. You cannot label swapfiles or Windows partitions from outside of Windows.

In Windows I clicked on Computer and then C drive and properties and labeled my C drive "C:".
Here is the output of my sudo blkid:

/dev/sda1: LABEL="C:" UUID="1CFC7A8DFC7A60C6" TYPE="ntfs" 
/dev/sda2: LABEL="Lucid" UUID="a162dc8a-e4df-4b79-b4c3-524761ff7ae1" TYPE="ext4" 
/dev/sda3: UUID="2a80f59e-e7c3-418e-aab2-ab5d19255a2f" TYPE="swap" 
/dev/sda5: LABEL="Precise" UUID="3b8b1954-24e6-4a5e-9074-70a1a94ed4be" TYPE="ext4" 
/dev/sda6: UUID="82c51b29-023f-4964-99b6-67b45a49527f" TYPE="swap" 
/dev/sda7: LABEL="Quantal" UUID="b5fc902c-0bf0-45b3-95a1-29f3c46dfe6a" TYPE="ext4" 
/dev/sda8: UUID="69ac3efc-8a8a-4056-89e0-59bb81c2f468" TYPE="swap" 
/dev/sda9: LABEL="Lucid Generic" UUID="109c11d0-71e3-41a4-87da-9e81535499a5" TYPE="ext4" 
/dev/sda10: UUID="24aa8c8b-53dc-4ecc-852b-ff2c25c8b342" TYPE="swap" 
/dev/sda11: LABEL="Precise-Generic" UUID="50104efb-d918-45a9-985e-a70c60e87ac0" TYPE="ext4" 
/dev/sda12: UUID="139390a6-2fe1-4ff2-b650-88ae3b0586c1" TYPE="swap" 
/dev/sda13: LABEL="Quantal-Generic" UUID="580e8c62-78ce-44a2-93e3-ccebd37c3acc" TYPE="ext4" 
/dev/sda14: UUID="ec3048b8-c644-435a-93bb-08bb4975d0db" TYPE="swap" 
/dev/sdb1: LABEL="Fantom" UUID="78B8D1A1B8D15DE6" TYPE="ntfs"

[oldfred]

For a neater display, you can do this - but you have to post in code tags to make it preserve format:

fred@fred-Precise:~$ sudo blkid -c /dev/null -o list
device     fs_type label    mount point    UUID
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/dev/sda1  ntfs    WinXP    (not mounted)  04B05B70B05B6768
/dev/sda2  ext3    backup   /mnt/backup    13a684e4-2849-4566-9528-21cd07028a9a
/dev/sda4  vfat    SHARE    (not mounted)  46CD-C9B2
/dev/sdb2  ext4    Maverick (not mounted)  0eea4e95-ea0a-4745-80d4-57bf2bbc9d69
/dev/sdb3  swap             (not mounted)  00c4e383-cf30-4b54-9a9f-d46953e3966e
/dev/sdb4  ext4    MavData  (not mounted)  431ba9e5-c72c-41c2-ba82-d8ee052336ff
/dev/sdc1  ext3    grub     (not mounted)  9e16ad9c-c5f8-4b5a-b2b3-20dfc71a422f
/dev/sdc2  ntfs    Shared   /mnt/shared    44332FD360AA9657
/dev/sdc4  ext2    bios_gpt (not mounted)  bbda6045-bb8a-4666-8bd4-04b3945ca581
/dev/sdc5  ext4    Karmic   (not mounted)  117412d5-2dbe-4011-8aec-ae310d1ee6c7
/dev/sdc6  ext3    Data     /mnt/data      a55e6335-616f-4b10-9923-e963559f2b05
/dev/sdc7  ext4    LUCID    (not mounted)  5e25282c-9c54-45df-9e79-514011e98648
/dev/sdc8  ext4    Test     (not mounted)  af29c61a-34e9-48eb-9c94-afcb4bb61582
/dev/sdc9  vfat    OLDG     (not mounted)  F6A6-705D
/dev/sdc10 ext4    newhome  (not mounted)  b8a7e331-a716-4ac1-bf58-6ac515606c6d
/dev/sdc11 swap             <swap>         09367687-86d1-4fd0-9b81-2787d3196159
/dev/sdc12 ext4    Puppy    (not mounted)  07e2a08d-37ca-4cf1-877b-f02b0eabcbca
/dev/sdc13 ext4    natty    (not mounted)  318fd41e-4210-4960-a0d9-ee9b48388d69
/dev/sdc14 ext4    kubuntu  (not mounted)  0b3034c1-d991-45f5-a7ea-9265125e6b05
/dev/sdc15 swap             <swap>         2c05178d-1e0e-4ae8-80e6-a700dc0d6eb9
/dev/sdc16 ext4    oneiric  (not mounted)  63d146fd-1c63-4b31-95c5-ab52e2892283
/dev/sdc17 ext4    server   (not mounted)  63045773-e42a-46eb-9e96-b93428542527
/dev/sdc18 ext4             (not mounted)  117e0c31-7e16-4e8b-90b7-a3c688a34f26
/dev/sdd1  vfat    EFI      (not mounted)  7B30-5ACA
/dev/sdd3  ext4    Precise  /              adc013e9-a23d-4a36-849b-3faeac005667
/dev/sdd4  ext4    Quantal  (not mounted)  94e634d0-39fb-4994-a685-8ee34747a240
fred@fred-Precise:~$

[Cavsfan]

Sweet! Thanks for that tip Oldfred! I'll make note of that!

ChinaJustin, check out this picture. This is the main benefit of using the label command:

[Cavsfan]

This is what sudo blkid -c /dev/null -o list produces for me. What am I doing wrong? Does it have to be edited in a text editor first?

device                                                                           fs_type         label            mount point                                                                          UUID
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/dev/sda1                                                                                                ntfs                  C:                     (not mounted)                                                                                                1CFC7A8DFC7A60C6
/dev/sda2                                                                                                ext4                  Lucid                  /                                                                                                            a162dc8a-e4df-4b79-b4c3-524761ff7ae1
/dev/sda3                                                                                                swap                                         <swap>                                                                                                       2a80f59e-e7c3-418e-aab2-ab5d19255a2f
/dev/sda5                                                                                                ext4                  Precise                (not mounted)                                                                                                3b8b1954-24e6-4a5e-9074-70a1a94ed4be
/dev/sda6                                                                                                swap                                         (not mounted)                                                                                                82c51b29-023f-4964-99b6-67b45a49527f
/dev/sda7                                                                                                ext4                  Quantal                (not mounted)                                                                                                b5fc902c-0bf0-45b3-95a1-29f3c46dfe6a
/dev/sda8                                                                                                swap                                         (not mounted)                                                                                                69ac3efc-8a8a-4056-89e0-59bb81c2f468
/dev/sda9                                                                                                ext4                  Lucid Generic          (not mounted)                                                                                                109c11d0-71e3-41a4-87da-9e81535499a5
/dev/sda10                                                                                               swap                                         (not mounted)                                                                                                24aa8c8b-53dc-4ecc-852b-ff2c25c8b342
/dev/sda11                                                                                               ext4                  Precise-Generic        (not mounted)                                                                                                50104efb-d918-45a9-985e-a70c60e87ac0
/dev/sda12                                                                                               swap                                         (not mounted)                                                                                                139390a6-2fe1-4ff2-b650-88ae3b0586c1
/dev/sda13                                                                                               ext4                  Quantal-Generic        (not mounted)                                                                                                580e8c62-78ce-44a2-93e3-ccebd37c3acc
/dev/sda14                                                                                               swap                                         (not mounted)                                                                                                ec3048b8-c644-435a-93bb-08bb4975d0db
/dev/sdb1                                                                                                ntfs                  Fantom                 /media/Fantom                                                                                                78B8D1A1B8D15DE6

[bogan]

Hi!, cavsfan,

It worked for me, and I did not do anything out of the ordinary [ Edit: Other than having to fiddle with the Terminal size to get a readable display. My first attempt had a display similar to yours but not so exagerated]:

 alan@alan-MS-7616:~$ sudo blkid -c /dev/null -o list
device          fs_type  label     mount point         UUID
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/dev/sda1       ntfs     System Reserved (not mounted) CC9240F39240E394
/dev/sda2       ntfs     Boot      (not mounted)       A8D04A41D04A15CA
/dev/sda4       ntfs               (not mounted)       368837118836CF5D
/dev/sda5       ext4     Precise-sda5 (not mounted)    a8ecbe4f-fc2d-40a1-b261-1b62d74e7130
/dev/sda6       swap               <swap>              a74af1d9-f7f9-4453-97e7-b9e3f370dca4
/dev/sda7       vfat               (not mounted)       CB27-6560
/dev/sda8       ext4     Home-sda5 (not mounted)       0a1beb1a-9c4b-45f7-a35b-a2689cf63a5d
/dev/sda9       vfat               (not mounted)       CC02-1DAF
/dev/sda10      ext4     Quantal-sda10 /               b5aab3a2-0086-4a12-9276-46bb5a615038
/dev/sda11      ext4     Home-sda10 /home              adc771a1-313c-47ae-8725-3c89b89bbfa2
/dev/sdb1       ntfs     Simulator (not mounted)       20D6C693D6C6691C
/dev/sdb2       ntfs     Backup    (not mounted)       CE5C7F585C7F3A73
/dev/sdb5       ext4     Home-sdb7 (not mounted)       390eaeec-0d84-4599-99e0-b2a770f9e61c
/dev/sdb6       ext4               (not mounted)       2d70c299-9315-45e6-85ad-3464c794f407
/dev/sdb7       ext4     Quantal-EXT-sdb7 (not mounted) 7608b1e5-b5ea-4563-ad94-8cf496b9f95f
/dev/sdb8       ext4               (not mounted)       8222255f-143c-4e48-8127-66cc43237a8c
/dev/sdc1       ntfs     Switch    /media/alan/Switch  3EB698C5B6987ED9
/dev/sdc2       ext4     Quantal-USB-sdc2 /media/alan/Quantal-USB-sdc2 cee38717-6980-4485-a047-124edb4d5a23
/dev/sdc3       swap               (not mounted)       9a74bb15-1215-4774-8419-f2908ee62d2e
alan@alan-MS-7616:~$

Running 12.10.[ Unlabelled partitions are empty.]

Chao!, bogan.

[oldfred]

You seem to have a lot of extra spaces. I do not edit. Did it look ok in terminal before copying?

My post is just as is, but over the versions blkid has changed. What version of Ubuntu are you running. Mine is Precise.

Maybe somewhere I added something but oldfred certainly does not remember. Your output looks the same except for all the extra spaces.

[bogan]

HI!, cavsfan,

My Post #58 edited.

Try altering the Terminal size, or using a Terminal, if you were using a full screen Console.

Were you using Lucid ?

Chao!, bogan.