HOWTO: Grub Customizer

[2CV67]

There are two solutions:

a) you can install the bootloader of 10.04 to mbr (on the files menu).
b) you can switch grub customizer to the 12.04 partition (also on the files menu)

Well, that's a whole lot better than zero solutions - Thanks!

I located the 2 options under 'Files' but am just hesitating before plunging in.

Is either option preferable?
What are the implications?

Thanks again!

[danielrichter]

Well, that's a whole lot better than zero solutions - Thanks!

I located the 2 options under 'Files' but am just hesitating before plunging in.

Is either option preferable?
What are the implications?

Thanks again!

The second is preferable as it's your main grub installation (I guess your primary system is 12.04). However Grub has the problem that the currenty running system (you're on 10.04) won't be found. But this is easy to fix simply by re-saving the config (or running update-grub) on 12.04.

[2CV67]

OK!

12.04 is back in business - thank you so much for your prompt assistance!

Thanks!

[2CV67]

Still not sure why I have duplicate os-prober & custom entries though.

Nor what to do about them...

gcust.jpg

[bogan]

Hi!, Daniel Ricter,

Glad of the chance to say thank-you directly, for a great Program and continued support.

I have had a similar strange duplicate effect in Grub Customizer, to that mentioned by 2CV67.

I have two 12.04 versions, a pae kernal directly installed on sde11 and a generic updated version, originally 9.10, on sde8. GC on the later controlling Grub Menu.

Currently, GC on sde11 shows, in 'os-prober (custom)>(new entries)', no less than eleven copies of:

Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS (12.04) (on /dev/sde8)

all with a tick although I previously unticked all but one.

Update:
I just rebooted to sde8 to check out my memory, and back again to sde11; whereupon GC has added another four copies of the same sde8 entries, in addition to the previous eleven.!!

NB. there is no entry for the recovery version of 12.04-generic and the originals had no way to identify which version 12.04 was referred to.[ I added the '12.04.1'.]

It also shows two copies of the 'custom' script, though there is nothing in them. [ I know I could delete one of them, but have not found a way to prevent or delete the duplicates.]

All the other entries in 'os-prober (custom)' are correct, Windows, 11.10 on USB & 10.04 on sde6, except that Windows does not have a recovery mode listed.

The entries in 'linux (custom)' for 12.04-pae, are also correct:

Ubuntu, with 12.04 LTS Linux 3.2.0-29-generic-pae (on sde11)
Ubuntu, with 12.04 LTS Linux 3.2.0-29-generic-pae (recovery mode)(on sde11

This is not new, I first noticed it about the end of May when the recovery entry went missing but as it is not an operational problem, I have not bothered to report it. That is because the Grub Menu is controlled by the GC on sde8.

In that version all is as I would expect.

Ubuntu, with 12.04 LTS Linux 3.2.0-29-generic (on /dev/sde8)

That also applies to the GC on the USB, which is operative when I boot from it via the Bios boot menu. Though the sde8 entries, including recovery versions, are shown under 'linux (custom)> (new entries)'.
[ There is also an empty entry for "header.dpkg-old> (new entries)", which does not exist in the sde11 version.}

I should perhaps add that I have not directly. edited any of the Grub or Grub Customizer files,.

Any Suggestions?? Sorry it is so long, it is complex to describe.
Is it possible to remove and re-install Grub Customizer, without all the procedure in the 'How To'? or would that not work.??

Chao!, bogan.

[bogan]

Hi!, 2CV67,

Your problem seems to be more simple than mine, and easier to correct, as it duplicates whole scripts, which GC can delete.

Which is, of course to treat the symptoms, and the error, cause untreated, may repeat itself.

Highlight the script header, eg.: 'custom' or 'os-prober', and select the negative symbol: '-', in the toolbar: that will delete it, then 'Save'.

Chao!, bogan.

[bogan]

Re: Duplicate Grub Menu Entries after saving GC config.

Hi!, All,

Further to my Post #325, things have got more complicated:

I re-installed the 12.04.1 pae in sde11 [ with its /Home in sde10 ] with a newly downloaded live CD of 12.04.1, The installation went OK with only some minor problems.

I formated the root partition; hence it has a new copy of Grub-Customizer and it now controls the Grub menu.

However, it is still showing 11 duplicate incomplete copies of the sde8 Ubuntu 12.04-generic entry, though no recovery entry, and after un-ticking them and Saving the configuration, GC adds a further four entries, and they are now displayed in Grub Menu.

What is worse. the GC in sde8 is now doing the same thing with the sde11 entries, though, of course they do not show in the Grub Menu. The sde8 entries there, are correct.

Running:

grob menuentry /boot/grub/grub.cfg

shows four sde8 entries above the others [windows,usb,10.04 & 11.10] and one below them, in the /etc/grub.d/30-so-prober_proxy entries.

Displaying the /etc/grub.d/30-os-prober_proxy file, shows 12 sde8 entries before the others & 11 afterwards. [ The ID's{? addresses?} are not the same for all of them.]

Like the /boot/grub/grub.cfg entries, in the Grub Menu, highlighting an sde8 entry and pressing 'e', the last two lines have only:

linux /vmlinuz root=/dev/sde8
initrd /initrd.img

but selecting one, boots OK with a tty login showing for a few seconds before going to a full GUI login and normal Ubuntu desktop.

How can I correct this mix-up, and stop GC creating duplicate entries.?? EDit: Runniong 'update-grub', before GC, made no difference.

As it is a clean install I assume the error must be in files in the Home Partition which did not get renewed; or is that not possible?

Chao!, bogan.

[bogan]

Re: Duplicate Grub Menu Entries after saving GC config. Update:

Hi!, All,

I installed Gnome-shell and that replaced the Grub Customer grub menu background with the star-screen Debian logo. To get rid of it I edited /etc/default/grub, by adding "GRUB_BACKGROUND=<imagepath>", where <imagepath> was the same as set by GC.

This returned the chosen background, but unfortunately left the default text colours, which do not show up well against that background.

I am posting the contents of the: '/etc/grub.d/30-os-prober_proxy' file, in the hope someone can advise me as to what action to take.

It seems worth noting that the batch of four entries containing 3 X 'c8138...' & '39f2...', are the four entries repeated each time Grub Customizer configuration is Saved, or when it is rescanned; whilst in the original 11 entries, below the sde6 entries, are several additional entries with quite different digits.

#!/bin/sh
#THIS IS A GRUB PROXY SCRIPT
'/etc/grub.d/proxifiedScripts/os-prober' | /etc/grub.d/bin/grubcfg_proxy "+*
+'Windows Vista (loader) (on /dev/sde1)'~e925706bb8401d20e0cc07cd00453cab~
-'Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS (12.04) (on /dev/sde8)'~c8138359f6a4e43a84c3e32ef602e0a7~
-'Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS (12.04) (on /dev/sde8)'~c8138359f6a4e43a84c3e32ef602e0a7~
-'Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS (12.04) (on /dev/sde8)'~c8138359f6a4e43a84c3e32ef602e0a7~
-'Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS (12.04) (on /dev/sde8)'~39f2bea9ceda40a0256e3780972bdd21~
-'Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS (12.04) (on /dev/sde8)'~c8138359f6a4e43a84c3e32ef602e0a7~
-'Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS (12.04) (on /dev/sde8)'~c8138359f6a4e43a84c3e32ef602e0a7~
-'Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS (12.04) (on /dev/sde8)'~c8138359f6a4e43a84c3e32ef602e0a7~
-'Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS (12.04) (on /dev/sde8)'~39f2bea9ceda40a0256e3780972bdd21~
-'Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS (12.04) (on /dev/sde8)'~c8138359f6a4e43a84c3e32ef602e0a7~
-'Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS (12.04) (on /dev/sde8)'~c8138359f6a4e43a84c3e32ef602e0a7~
-'Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS (12.04) (on /dev/sde8)'~c8138359f6a4e43a84c3e32ef602e0a7~
-'Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS (12.04) (on /dev/sde8)'~39f2bea9ceda40a0256e3780972bdd21~
+'Ubuntu, with 11.10 Linux 3.0.0-24-generic ( on USB) (on /dev/sda2)'~06326763671374ea76fa1965999b4863~
+'Ubuntu, with 11.10 Linux 3.0.0-24-generic (recovery mode) ( on USB) (on /dev/sda2)'~0f452f935f90913f7954c85f82021486~
+'Ubuntu, with 10.04 LTS Linux 2.6.32-42-generic (on sda6) (on /dev/sde6)'~b7a70d5132f6b78b0bb8855b9b218d26~
+'Ubuntu, with 10.04 Linux 2.6.32-42-generic (recovery mode) (on sda6) (on /dev/sde6)'~45b8ba42a6db1f408deb15f1bdeb8868~
+'Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS (12.04) (on /dev/sde8)'~c8138359f6a4e43a84c3e32ef602e0a7~
-'Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS (12.04) (on /dev/sde8)'~c8138359f6a4e43a84c3e32ef602e0a7~
-'Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS (12.04) (on /dev/sde8)'~39f2bea9ceda40a0256e3780972bdd21~
-'Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS (12.04) (on /dev/sde8)'~30aa6e2264f526362a779e2cc7102729~
-'Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS (12.04) (on /dev/sde8)'~36ddee63368b2e11f49be8f46017a123~
-'Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS (12.04) (on /dev/sde8)'~cbbe1f6232a7c7e4599aab2078970ebe~
-'Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS (12.04) (on /dev/sde8)'~ecc239d74178a4e281cc816e3424d1de~
-'Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS (12.04) (on /dev/sde8)'~c8138359f6a4e43a84c3e32ef602e0a7~
-'Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS (12.04) (on /dev/sde8)'~c8138359f6a4e43a84c3e32ef602e0a7~
-'Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS (12.04) (on /dev/sde8)'~39f2bea9ceda40a0256e3780972bdd21~
-'Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS (12.04) (on /dev/sde8)'~7638b89af8c75109af48766ecffa6f04~
"

Is there any point, or possible harm, in just directly deleting the false entries from the Grub Customer display? - just leaving one -- but which one ??

Chao!, bogan.

[drs305]

Is there any point, or possible harm, in just directly deleting the false entries from the Grub Customer display? - just leaving one -- but which one ??

Chao!, bogan.

For the moment, I'll address GRUB generally rather than GC specifically since I don't know how GC's prober treats GC entries in another partition.

Under normal circumstances, Grub's os-prober will take the entries in another partitions 10_linux section to help build the menu. I think I'd try directly editing the sda8 grub.cfg file and manually remove any extraneous entries from that menu.

I'd also look in your current OS's /etc/grub.d folder to make sure there is only one executable script looking at the other partitions. Although I don't suspect it in this case that is often the reason for duplicate entries.

I haven't used GC in a long time, and I don't recall how the proxified scripts work - I don't know how the script you posted was created. If needed I might install GC and see what the script looks like on my machine.

[bogan]

Hi!, drs305,

Thanks for the response, I had just finished re-reading all the Posts in this thread, and had just about concluded the only course was to remove Grub Customizer from all the partitions, rename the GC proxy files and revert the 'proxifiedScripts' to their original status in grub.d.

Then to remove and reinstall grub-pc and start again from scratch.

In those earlier Posts, I notice that 2CV67, who reported duplicate scripts in his Grub menu - Posts #319>#326 - had previously Posted - #204>#207, back in Jan 20th 2012 - duplicate entries almost exactly the same as my stage 2 problem, except that his include some recovery entries, whereas mine had none. His problems - according to the later Posts, to which Daniel Ricter also responded, do not seem to have been resolved.

I put "stage 2" because my problem has spread to all the partitions; using your:

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

in each of the OS's shows duplicate entries for sde8, but no recovery entry. For example from sde11:

 0    Ubuntu, with 12.04.1 LTS Linux 3.2.0-29-generic-pae (on /dev/sde11)
     1    Ubuntu, with 12.04.1 LTS Linux 3.2.0-29-generic-pae (recovery mode) (on /dev/sde11)
     2    Memory test (memtest86+)
     3    Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS (12.04) (on /dev/sde8)
     4    Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS (12.04) (on /dev/sde8)
     5    Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS (12.04) (on /dev/sde8)
     6    Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS (12.04) (on /dev/sde8)
     7    Windows Vista (loader) (on /dev/sde1)
     8    Ubuntu, with 11.10 Linux 3.0.0-24-generic ( on USB) (on /dev/sda2)
     9    Ubuntu, with 11.10 Linux 3.0.0-24-generic (recovery mode) ( on USB) (on /dev/sda2)
    10    Ubuntu, with 10.04 LTS Linux 2.6.32-42-generic (on sda6) (on /dev/sde6)
    11    Ubuntu, with 10.04 Linux 2.6.32-42-generic (recovery mode) (on sda6) (on /dev/sde6)
    12    Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS (12.04) (on /dev/sde8)
alan@alan-MS-7318:~$ # There were another 7 sde8 entries, but I unticked them in GC.

10.04 on sde6 has a single false sde8 entry & no recovery, 12.04.1 on sde8 has the correct entries for itself, including recovery, but four false entries for sde11, whilst 10.10 on sda2/USB has five false entries for sde8 but no recovery entry.

Regarding your comment about being sure there is only one executable script in grub.d, the only file that appears to have false entries is 30-os-prober_proxy, which I posted in #328 - if you can call that an executable script?? { that is in sde11, in sde8 it is similar but is 20-os-prober_proxy and the first file it lists is os-prober~1}

But the first line of that file:

'/etc/grub.d/proxifiedScripts/os-prober' | /etc/grub.d/bin/grubcfg_proxy "+*

Presumably means it uses those scripts which do address other OS's. { the second is not accessible to me, so I have no idea what it does. Though the syntax of that line looks a bit suspect to me, with "+* at the end.}

I hope I am not overwhelming you with too much info.

Chao!, bogan.