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Splashimages for GRUB2
Edited Saturday, Friday, January 01 2010  |
This web-page is part of a larger site giving examples of how to install Windows+Ubuntu Linux operating systems 'dual boot' in a computer. Illustrated Dual Boot HomePage
| WARNING:
GRUB2 is a work in progress and the information in this website is incomplete and may be wrong and/or out of date. |
| NOTE: Please consult the official GNU GRUB 2 Manual. |
GRUB2_splashimages
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| How to add a splashmage in GRUB2 - the beautiful splashimages from the Ubuntu repositories Changing your Splashimage Font Colors - you'll need to do this for most splashimages How To Change Boot Menu Resolution - you can use a larger, better quality splashimage How to make your own splashimage for GRUB2 - almost any image file you like will be fine |
1) Download the free, already-made splashimages from the Ubuntu repositories
2) You'll find your new splashimages in /usr/share/images/grub/ Copy the images to /boot/grub, that way if someone has an installation with a separate /boot with an encrypted file system for / , they can still use the images. (GRUB can't 'see' inside an encrypted file system).
3) Here are the thumbnails,
4) To get your new splashimage to appear, you need to edit a file called /etc/grub/ 05_debian_theme.
5) scroll down in the file and find line 16 or 17 6) change the following code in line 16 or 17 from:
to replace 'moreblue-orbit-grub' with the name of the splashimage of your choice)
Save and close the file. 7) Run grub-mkconfig (Karmic Koala), or update-grub (in earlier versions of Ubuntu),
The expected feedback should look something like this,
8) That's it! All done! Now you can reboot and see how it looks! SOURCES: 1) Jaunty and GRUB 2 - Experiences in the Community - shirishag75 2) How to make your own GRUB2 splashimage: debian Grub v2 SplashImage 3) Debian Wiki - Grub grub.cfg.manpage 4) HOWTO: Splash Images with grub2 and grub-pc on Debian Linux - Kushal Koolwal’s Linux Blogs |
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When you have a beautiful splashimage, the next thing to do is choose a suitable font color to go with it. Changing the font color can make a big improvement to the appearance of your GRUB Menu and splashimage. Changing the font color would be very important if you have chosen a splashimage which contains a lot of dark shades and you're still using a black font. You might have trouble reading the titles in your GRUB menu. Changing your font color to white or a light color would be a real necessity in that situation. We can change the font colors by editing /etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme and running 'sudo grub-mkconfig' (Karmic Koala), or 'sudo update-grub', (earlier versions of Ubuntu). To alter the grub menu font colors, you need to edit the same file you edited to set your GRUB menu background, /etc/grub/ 05_debian_theme.
Scroll down to about lines numbered around 33 to 43 and find this section of the file,
NOTE: If you're displaying a splashimage (background), you will probably want to leave 'black' for your second normal color, that's why I didn't highlight it yellow. In GRUB2, 'black' really means transparent. If you try to set any color here, that color will hide most of your background, (splashimage). Colors we can choose from include, black (or transparent), dark-gray, light-gray, white, brown, yellow, red, light-red, blue, light-blue, green, light-green, cyan, light-cyan, magenta, light-magenta.
For example, just for demonstration purposes, pretend I have a plain lemon colored background image without anything else on it,
Changes to 'set color_normal=foreground/background' color settings will affect most of the text in your GRUB menu, and your background color. As you can see in the above example, using set color_normal=green/black gives me the green font on a 'black' (transparent) background. Because of the transparent background, my lemon colored background image shows through. Changes to 'set color_highlight=foreground/background' color settings will only affect your highlight text, and the highlight selection bar. Using set color_highlight=yellow/light-red gives me the yellow highlight text on the light-red highlight or selection bar. When you're finished, remember to run update-grub or grub-mkconfig for the changes to take effect.
TIP
LINKS gfxterm - GRUB Wiki Care to play with grub2-graphical? - Arch Linux Forums GRUB 2 Graphical Menu Theme File Format - GRUB Wiki - Theme Format |
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If you want to use a splashimage with more pixels than 640x480, you can set the display resolution higher in GRUB 2. That will give you a better quality picture and your fonts will appear smaller so you'll be able to see a lot more of your boot entries on the screen without scrolling so much. 1. If you don't already know what resolutions your video hardware can support, you can boot GRUB2 and press 'C' fro your GRUB Menu to go into into CLI Mode GRUB . Then you can run the vbeinfo command for a list of resolutions your hardware can support. Press your pause key if you need more time to read the text. 2. Write the numbers down on a piece of scrap paper if you need to. 3. Open your /etc/default/grub file with a text editor and change your settings there
4. Alter the numbers after where it says"GRUB_GFXMODE=" with a suitable resolution for your hardware,
4. Save the file before closing it. 5. Run sudo grub-mkconfig to write the changes to your grub.cfg,
6. reboot and see if it worked. |
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There's nothing much to it really, you can use just about any photo, drawing or digital artwork. You can use a picture of your favorite girl / boy / dog / cat / horse / car / motorbike / truck / boat / airplane, the biggest fish you ever caught, your company's logo, almost anything you like. 1) First, right-click on the image file and click 'properties', or open the image with Image Viewer and find out how many pixels it has. 2) For best results you should try to choose an image file that will match the shape of your monitor. For example, if your monitor is 1050x780 pixels, that's about 3/4 as high as it is wide. If you want your image to fill the whole screen and you don't want part of it cut off, you need to use an image that's about 3/4 as high as it is wide, so it will fit your monitor properly. 3) Also see How To Change Boot Menu Resolution TIP: If you really want to use an image that doesn't fit, first make a copy of it. Never alter your original image because you won't be able to reverse the changes ones they've been saved. Open the copy of your image with GIMP image editor in Ubuntu. Crop and/or resize the copy of your image to make it fit your monitor if you need to. 4) Currently GRUB 2 supports three image formats, they are: .png, .tga and .jpg. Everyone should be able to use the .png and .tge images without any problems. If you want to use a .jpg image you can, but you probably need to use the insmod command to insert the module for that first. The module for that is called jpeg.mod, see the insmod command. You'll need to add the insmod command to your grub.cfg by editing /etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme. While you have that file open you'll probably need to add '.jpg' as an image format in line 16 or 17 too. If you don't want to do it that way, the alternative is to convert the image to .png or .tga. You can do that by opening your image in GIMP and clicking 'save as', and type a file name of your choice with a .png or .tga filename extension after it. That will make a copy of your image in the format you want. 5) Copy your image file to your /boot/grub/ directory,
6) To get your new splashimage to appear, you need to edit a file called /etc/grub/ 05_debian_theme.
7) scroll down in the file until you find line 16 or 17 8) change the following code from:
to replace 'moreblue-orbit-grub' with the name of your own splashimage)
Save and close the file. 9) Run grub-mkconfig (Karmic Koala), or update-grub (in earlier versions of Ubuntu), to write the changes to grub-conf,
10) That's it! All done! Now you can reboot and see how it looks! |