How to have a custom Grub2 menu that is maintenance free

[Cavsfan]

If you just use Ubuntu or dual boot/multi boot Ubuntu with Debian, Mint, Arch, Fedora, openSUSE, Windows, etc. this will give you all the information to create a custom background, fonts colors and menu that never needs modified.
You can also choose the default OS and the timeout before the default OS is selected. That will never need changing even when a new kernel is installed in any Linux system.

It has been updated for UEFI/GPT partitioned systems.

The only time you would need to modify anything is if you get bored with the background picture, font colors or if you install/remove/re-install an operating system.

The Wiki evolved from this thread: How to: Create a Customized GRUB2 Screen that is Maintenance Free.

There are several examples of what your screen could look like.

There is a link in the bottom of the Wiki that links back to this thread to post questions, comments, problems, etc.

All Linux systems are pretty much the same as far as customizing grub goes but, Arch is a little different see here for Arch Linux.

Grub has gotten much simpler and you should find that it is easier to customize. The Wiki has been updated with the ability to boot into the backup kernel.

If you choose not to have that ability, just omit that part and go with 2 entries per system instead of the three in the Wiki.

[dino99]

hey you made a good job, clearly explained, thanks.
thats kind of wiki have a place into "tutorials & tips" subforum.

[Cavsfan]

hey you made a good job, clearly explained, thanks.
thats kind of wiki have a place into "tutorials & tips" subforum.

You're welcome.
Didn't you get the message:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2074191

"the forum will be closed completely to posting after a transitional period."

[Cavsfan]

Here is my current Grub2 menu on Quantal Quetzal 12.10.
I have 2 Lucid installs, a Precise Pangolin install, a Quantal Quetzal install and Windows 7.
I leave the default on Windows 7 for my wife in case the PC reboots.
Even when new kernels are installed in any Ubuntu, the default still is Windows 7.
The normal font color is yellow and highlight is white.



Feel free to post your custom grub2 menu if you have used my wiki to make it.

[Cavsfan]

I installed 3 more systems - Lucid, Precise and Quantal on separate partitions to keep the grub files generic in case anyone needs a copy of the original file.

I got an upgrade to grub and it gave me some errors. Luckily I had a copy of 05_debian_theme to fix the error.

I had to edit fstab every time I installed another system as it would pull all of the swap partitions into fstab.
There is a section on editing fstab when installing or reinstalling Ubuntu in the wiki in my signature in section 1.7.

It would be very difficult to maneuver the long menu without customizing it as I have.
Here is what my grub2 screen currently looks like with 7 operating systems:



Here is the output of 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: UUID="580e8c62-78ce-44a2-93e3-ccebd37c3acc" TYPE="ext4" LABEL="Quantal-Generic" 
/dev/sda14: UUID="ec3048b8-c644-435a-93bb-08bb4975d0db" TYPE="swap" 
/dev/sdb1: LABEL="Fantom" UUID="78B8D1A1B8D15DE6" TYPE="ntfs"

They are easy to recognize since they have all been labeled as explained in 1.6 of the wiki.

I will try to put the generic grub files on the wiki but, if any one needs a copy of something let me know and I will post the contents of the file here.

[bogan]

HI!, Cavsfan,

I see your latest Grub menu is still using Grub v1.98-1: I thought grub 2 was 1.99.

With Quantal 12.10 Grub Customizer is a disaster, and I get no recovery options, so I am tempted to try your method; I have studied it with interest in the past, but have not tried it out, as Grub Customer did what I needed.

Will it work with Grub 2 v2.00 ?? which has files very different from previous versions.

Edit: I use the following to see what my grub menu will look like : will it work with your system ?

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

Currently mine shows like this:

0    ature_menuentry_id}
     1    _id_option=
     2    _id_option=
     3    entry_id_option
     4    Ubuntu  3.5.0-18 Linux 12.1 (on sda10)
     5    Memory test (memtest86+)
     6    Ubuntu Quantal (12.10) (on USB)
     7    Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS (12.04)
     8    Ubuntu 12.10 (12.10)
     9    Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS (12.04)
    10    Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS (12.04)
    11    Windows 7 (loader) (on /dev/sda1)
    12    Ubuntu 3.2.0-33pae (12.04.1) ( on sda5)

I have no idea what the first three entries mean, the first [Number 4] and the last, I renamed in grub Customer; entry 6 I( edited in /boot/grub/grub,cfg; whilst entries 7,9, & 10 are spurious duplicates of the sda5 entry, created by update-grub & Grub Customizer

Chao!, bogan.

[Cavsfan]

HI!, Cavsfan,

I see your latest Grub menu is still using Grub v1.98-1: I thought grub 2 was 1.99.

With Quantal 12.10 Grub Customizer is a disaster, and I get no recovery options, so I am tempted to try your method; I have studied it with interest in the past, but have not tried it out, as Grub Customer did what I needed.

Will it work with Grub 2 v2.00 ?? which has files very different from previous versions.

Edit: I use the following to see what my grub menu will look like : will it work with your system ?

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

Currently mine shows like this:

0    ature_menuentry_id}
     1    _id_option=
     2    _id_option=
     3    entry_id_option
     4    Ubuntu  3.5.0-18 Linux 12.1 (on sda10)
     5    Memory test (memtest86+)
     6    Ubuntu Quantal (12.10) (on USB)
     7    Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS (12.04)
     8    Ubuntu 12.10 (12.10)
     9    Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS (12.04)
    10    Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS (12.04)
    11    Windows 7 (loader) (on /dev/sda1)
    12    Ubuntu 3.2.0-33pae (12.04.1) ( on sda5)

I have no idea what the first three entries mean, the first [Number 4] and the last, I renamed in grub Customer; entry 6 I( edited in /boot/grub/grub,cfg; whilst entries 7,9, & 10 are spurious duplicates of the sda5 entry, created by update-grub & Grub Customizer

Chao!, bogan.

Hi bogan!

Replace that old command with this one:

grep -e "menuentry " -e "submenu" /boot/grub/grub.cfg | sed 's/^[ \t]*//' | cut -d "'" -f1,2 | nl --starting-line-number=0

I got that from drs305 just in case you thought I was smart enough to come up with it myself!
Not sure why but, that old one doesn't even work in Lucid any more!
However neither can see what is in the submenus of the default grub menu.
The submenus came with grub 1.99 I believe.

Here is the output of that command on my system and it looks just like the picture:

     0    menuentry "Lucid Lynx" {
     1    menuentry "Lucid Lynx (Recovery Mode)" {
     2    menuentry "Lucid Lynx Generic" {
     3    menuentry "Lucid Lynx Generic (Recovery Mode)" {
     4    menuentry "Precise Pangolin 12.04" {
     5    menuentry "Precise Pangolin 12.04 (Recovery Mode)" {
     6    menuentry "Precise Pangolin Generic 12.04" {
     7    menuentry "Precise Pangolin 12.04 Generic (Recovery Mode)" {
     8    menuentry "Quantal Quetzel 12.10" {
     9    menuentry "Quantal Quetzel 12.10 (Recovery Mode)" {
    10    menuentry "Quantal Quetzel Generic 12.10" {
    11    menuentry "Quantal Quetzel 12.10 Generic (Recovery Mode)" {
    12    menuentry "Windows 7" {

That picture is on Lucid and it uses grub 1.98, I believe Maverick Meerkat and anything after that and before Quantal uses grub 1.99.
Quantal uses grub 2.00.

The wiki is broken down into Lucid at the top (1.3 in the table of contents) and Maverick and later towards the bottom (1.4).
There are just a couple of differences between 1.99 and 2.00 in 05_debian_theme.
Pretty much everything else is the same.
Grub 1.99 gives an erroneous error when selecting windows but, still goes into windows.
Grub 2.00 does not give any error when selecting windows which is why I am glad Precise is getting grub 2.0 in January. At least that is what I heard.

The wiki is a lot more straight forward than that How to. It became pretty convoluted and it was closed for editing. The Forum's policy is How Tos should be in wiki format.

So, be sure and use the wiki on the first post of this thread or in my signature (green links).
Let me know what you think and if you use it post your grub menu when you are done.

Thanks for the post!

[Cavsfan]

Here is my current grub2 menu customized on Precise grub 1.99:



The normal font color is yellow and the highlight font color is white.

[Cavsfan]

Here is my current grub2 menu customized on Quantal grub 2.00:



The normal font color is cyan and the highlight font color is light-red.

[bogan]

Hi!, Cavsfan,

Thanks for your response, Post #7, for some reason my subscription advisory did not pick it up.

In Quantal with grub 2.00 and Grub Customizer 3, the 'old command' showed exactly what was displayed on the screen, apart from the first three odd extra bits.

Weirdly, the 'new command', you suggested, shows not only what is displayed, but in addition, it shows the entries complete with part of the script for each:

alan@alan-MS-7616:~$ grep -e "menuentry " -e "submenu" /boot/grub/grub.cfg | sed 's/^[ \t]*//' | cut -d "'" -f1,2 | nl --starting-line-number=0
     0    menuentry "Ubuntu  3.5.0-18 Linux 12.1 (on sda10)" --class ubuntu --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os $menuentry_id_option 'gnulinux-simple-b5aab3a2-0086-4a12-9276-46bb5a615038
     1    menuentry "Memory test (memtest86+)" {
     2    menuentry "Ubuntu 12.10 (12.10)" --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os $menuentry_id_option 'osprober-gnulinux-simple-cee38717-6980-4485-a047-124edb4d5a23
     3    menuentry "Ubuntu Quantel (12.10) on USB" --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os $menuentry_id_option 'osprober-gnulinux-simple-7608b1e5-b5ea-4563-ad94-8cf496b9f95f
     4    menuentry "Ubuntu 3.5.0-18 (12.10) on sdb7 External" --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os $menuentry_id_option 'osprober-gnulinux-simple-7608b1e5-b5ea-4563-ad94-8cf496b9f95f
     5    menuentry "Windows 7 (loader) (on /dev/sda1)" --class windows --class os $menuentry_id_option 'osprober-chain-CC9240F39240E394
     6    menuentry "Ubuntu 3.2.0-33pae (12.04.1) ( on sda5)" --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os $menuentry_id_option 'osprober-gnulinux-simple-a8ecbe4f-fc2d-40a1-b261-1b62d74e7130
alan@alan-MS-7616:~$

Line 2 is actually the entry for the USB OS and line 3, labelled 'USB', is actually a duplicate of the sda5 entry line6, which is very confusing.

I have had this problem of duplicate entries for some time and Posted about it but got no response; Grub customizer adds them on Saving the configuration.

As far as I can see, to use your system, I would need to start with virgin installations of all the OSs, none of them having run Grub Customizer, as the duplicates get copied from one OS to another by update-grub.

Chao!, bogan.