Yesterday I did a post on how to install grub 2 on Jaunty Jackalope machine. And I started getting comments that it was as ugly as it’s predecessor. And I could not agree more on that. Following which I started looking for way to pimp up grub 2 to look a little more eye candy. Let’s see how to get splash (background) image for your grub.

1. First we’ll have to download the splash image package for Ubuntu. Bring up a terminal window by hitting ALT+F2 and typing “gnome-terminal“. In the terminal window type the following command.

sudo apt-get install grub2-splashimages

2. This will install the splash image package. Let’s check what splash images are installed. These images can be found at:

/usr/share/images/grub/

On the terminal type the following command:

cd  /usr/share/images/grub/
 
ls

You’ll see a list of available splash theme for grub 2.

The files are in .tga format which is a image format. Following is a thumbnail of all the files:

3. All you need is to zero down on the image you want to have as your grub splash image. I found them boring, so I created my own image.

• Downloaded an image from here. (Caution, this image could be NSFW)

• Using Gimp, I resized the image to 640×480 and saved it by name ubuntu-girl.tga (Unfortunately, that is the dimension supported by Grub 2. However, you can also use a larger dimension image but it’ll be cut at the Grub splash.
• I then moved the image to /usr/share/images/grub/
• Final image looks like this:

4. Now we have to tell Grub 2 to use this image. To do so, type the following command at terminal:

sudo gedit /etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme

find the line

for i in {/boot/grub,/usr/share/images/desktop-base}/moreblue-orbit-grub.{png,tga}; do

and replace it with the following

for i in {/boot/grub,/usr/share/images/desktop-base,/usr/share/images/grub}/ubuntu-girl.{png,tga}; do

5. All that is left now is to update grub 2 . Type the following command on terminal

sudo update-grub

Grub 2 will detect the new theme and you should see something like this

(This is a little old screenshot and here the background is named Aesculus hippo…. However it should be ubuntu-girl.tga)

All that is left now is to reboot the machine to check the new sexy grub 2 splash in action.

I was wondering when will Ubuntu have a stylish GRUB. To my surprise I read that the next release of Ubuntu 9.10 i.e Karmic Kaola will ship with Grub 2. I was excited and wanted to try it on my machine. Following is what I did to install Grub 2 on Jaunty.

A word of Caution: When you try to install it on Jaunty you’ll not be able to login to your machine untill you follow the steps carefully and change “root” to “uuid”.

Let’s being…

1. Bring up a terminal window by hittin ALT+F2 and typing “gnome-terminal” (without quotes).

2. Type the following on your terminal:

sudo apt-get install grub-pc

Click enter to install Grub 2 and will modify the existing grub boot loader menu.

3. Reboot your machine.

In Jaunty Grub 2 modifies the existing configuration incorrectly and we are going to change it. After rebooting at the “Chainload into Grub 2″ menu item press ‘e’ to edit the configuration and change:

root   xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx

to

uuid   xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx

Press Enter and then press ‘b’ to boot into Jaunty. Once you have successfully booted from Grub 2 you can install Grub 2 on your machine by hitting the following command on your terminal window:

sudo upgrade-from-grub-legacy

All should be fine after this and you have your new Grub 2 to rock with. Following is how your grub 2 will look like

If you mess up something, follow the steps here.

Update

As Brian mentioned in the comments, you can make your Grub 2 look better in graphic mode. Check here to pimp up your Grub 2. Thanks Brian!

I had to re-install Windows on my partition and in the process it was obvious that I was going to lose my Grub. However, I knew I could very easily get it back. You can lose grub for various reasons and the most common being installing windows, which unfortunately doesn’t respect your settings and erases your grub. However, there’s nothing to panic in that case because restoring grub is no rocket science.

Let’s see how to restore grub on a machine which has Ubuntu:

1. Boot using a Live CD or pen drive of Ubuntu. You’ll be having a live session running.

2. Start a terminal Window by hitting ALT+F2 and typing gnome-terminal.

3. On the terminal window type the following command:

sudo grub

You’ll see the prompt changing in the terminal window.

4. At the grub prompt, type the following:

find /boot/grub/stage1

This should show you info about location

5. As I got (hd0,5) in my case, following is what I am going to enter at the grub prompt:

root (hd0,5)

and hit enter

6. Next we’ll install the grub at the mbr using the following command:

setup (hd0)

You’ll see the confirmation of installation of Grub.

7. Type quit to exit grub prompt. Close the terminal window and restart your computer.

You’ll have your grub restored.