How to have a custom Grub2 menu that is maintenance free

[von Stalhein]

Cheers!
I only have XP in the list as this machine is a Frankenstein of old parts and that OS is on an old HDD from about 2003. In the near future I'm hoping to build something with some serious grunt but funds are tight!

I'm running Arch & Fedora in a VM but don't have the space to "promote" any more OS's to GRUB atm.

The image is that of rice paddy terraces taken from a civet coffee farm in Bali, where we visited a couple of years ago.

[Cavsfan]

Cheers!
I only have XP in the list as this machine is a Frankenstein of old parts and that OS is on an old HDD from about 2003. In the near future I'm hoping to build something with some serious grunt but funds are tight!

I'm running Arch & Fedora in a VM but don't have the space to "promote" any more OS's to GRUB atm.

The image is that of rice paddy terraces taken from a civet coffee farm in Bali, where we visited a couple of years ago.

I totally understand. I've had this machine since 2009 and have replaced the HD and a bunch of fans including the CPU fan, plus the monitor.
But, that's about it and I'm hoping it'll hang on a couple more years.

That's a long way to go for a good cup of coffee. Nice image though!

Kind regards

[Cavsfan]

I just edited the Wiki to add that you can use whatever type editor you are best suited with near the top.

I also added the different types of picture types that Grub2 accepts: *.jpg, *.jpeg, *.png and *.tga pictures. But, PNG pictures seem to work the best.

Cheers

[Cavsfan]

If any one is interested, Yaketty Yak 16.10 grub customization is identical to Xenial Xerux 16.04.

I installed it yesterday and while going through the installation process, I noticed it stayed on "running 'update-grub'" for about 5 minutes.
So, before I installed the kernel that was in the update queue, I customized, rebooted and then installed the kernel.

Once customized it flies through update-grub in about one second. It seems to hang while probing for other operating systems, namely Windows 10 and Arch Linux.
It may not take that long on your system, but I had to do it myself since I'm on an old SATA drive with no SSD but, one of these days...

[Cavsfan]

I just updated the wiki to include Yakkety Yak 16.10 and also removed Wily Werewolf 15.10.

When I removed 15.10 I also removed the code for using upstart.

Systemd is the way of future anyway.

[Cavsfan]

My latest Grub screen with all Arch entries. Although it is on Arch, it could be on any Linux distro that I've used so far:

[von Stalhein]

I've spent an hour looking through the wiki(s), my directories and the web but I can't find/remember how I customised the terminal output when running

sudo update-grub

It outputs the distributions as it adds them to the GRUB menu.

[Cavsfan]

I've spent an hour looking through the wiki(s), my directories and the web but I can't find/remember how I customised the terminal output when running

sudo update-grub

It outputs the distributions as it adds them to the GRUB menu.

Not sure what you are asking. sudo update-grub will update the /boot/grub/grub.cfg file and the boot entries based on what is executable in /etc/grub.d/ like 06_custom.

If you have customized the grub and have /etc/grub.d/06_custom not executable, then those entries will not show up at boot time.
Make it executable by this command:

sudo chmod +x /etc/grub.d/06_custom

Then sudo update-grub should list the custom entries above all of the other entries. Then when you are good with the way they work make these files unexecutable:

sudo chmod -x/etc/grub.d/10_linux
sudo chmod -x/etc/grub.d/30_os-prober

and once again sudo update-grub and it should list only your picture that you are using and what you have between the quotes in the 2nd line of /etc/grub.d/06_custom.

BTW, PNG pictures work much better than JPG.

I hope this is what you needed.

[von Stalhein]

Hi Cavsfan - yep that was it.

I have a little message in the start of that bash file that echoes what's actually going on and I'd upgraded to 16.10 & hadn't tidied it up.
Cheers!!

[Cavsfan]

Hi Cavsfan - yep that was it.

I have a little message in the start of that bash file that echoes what's actually going on and I'd upgraded to 16.10 & hadn't tidied it up.
Cheers!!

Great! I thought that might be it.
Cheers!