[SOLVED] Question about grub background on liveCD/DVD/USB menu

greenjeans · 2024-12-10 23:07:26

So I already have a nice grub splash.png for the installed system that works great.

But for the liveCD it needs it's own background, else I just get a black background which is fine. But would be nice to customize that too.

Question is, are there size/resolution/color limitations? In the regular grub splash.png you can use anything as long as it's a .png and not a .jpg. But I tried this in the live menu with a 1600x1200 image and it wouldn't do it, just defaulted to a black background.

Does it need to be one of those tiny 640x480 pics? And a simple design scalable .png?

I bet @golinux knows.

Trying to play with custom fonts too right now using grub-mkfont.

ralph.ronnquist · 2024-12-10 23:18:13

One might also find grub documentation on the Internet if not installed.

greenjeans · 2024-12-10 23:29:09

One might also find grub documentation on the Internet if not installed.

I've been down that rabbit hole for a couple hours now, what i've found is a whole lot of wrong information about the grub splash, and horror stories of people in the last few years of people trying ever thing in the world, and dedicated programs like Grub Customizer trying to change their grub background, when it's literally as simple as making sure there's no grub background info in the grub config files, and dropping a new "splash.png" into /boot/grub, you don't even have to run update-grub.

What I cannot find a word about, is about the live grub menu background. I'll keep trying I guess, but I figured golinux would know or fsmithred.

Seriously Ralph, you have no idea how much better i've tried to be in the last week about looking up solutions myself, I have countless hours reading man pages and documentation, I have had a LOT of issues this last week, and 99% of them I have solved myself. And learned a lot of new things along the way. But there's a lot of new stuff i've had to learn to do this in 2024 as opposed to 2017.

I'm trying awfully hard to search more and post less man, if you only knew the amount of data i've absorbed just in the last week I feel like you'd be appreciative of my efforts.

Last edited by greenjeans (2024-12-10 23:29:40)

golinux · 2024-12-11 00:05:56

@greenjeans . . . I used to know the answer to that question but now it is lost in time. Sadly, it could take days for that information to re-surface.

EDIT: The fog is kind of lifting . . . Poke /usr/share/desktop-base/grub-themes/

greenjeans · 2024-12-11 16:07:55

@golinux, yeah I saw those and noted they were all 640x480, but was hoping maybe that requirement had changed, used to be regular grub had the same limitations IIRC.

Tried a 640x480 .svg last night just for **** and giggles, but no joy. But didn't hurt anything to try, if the live grub doesn't like what you offer it just drops a black background in there instead.

Was really wanting to use a background with some lettering in the zombified font I used to make the other artwork, but obviously when it scales up to your monitor size anything complex like that gets stretched out bad.

I guess i'll make a request upstream to see if the requirement could be changed to match regular grub behavior. Thanks for the reply!

fsmithred · 2024-12-11 21:57:50

If you're using refractasnapshot, replace /usr/lib/refractasnapshot/iso/isolinux/splash.png with the 640x480 png of your choice. (.jpg should work, too.) It will be copied to the right places for booting the iso with isolinux and/or grub if you arranged it to work with bios and/or uefi.

greenjeans · 2024-12-12 14:53:58

@fsmithred yep that's what i've been doing. But just had to try a larger one, also tried an svg , it just ignored 'em and threw a pure black background.

So I bit the bullet and opened Inkscape and made one, just graphical as any kind of image or text doesn't scale right. A dark charcoal background with a secondary box drawn inside it with a little lighter gray. Basically using same colors I use for other artwork on the iso, should look decent and be a cut above just a pure black background.

I'm really all done now with Vuu-do 5 except for the script to change runlevels.

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#1 2024-12-10 23:07:26

[SOLVED] Question about grub background on liveCD/DVD/USB menu

#2 2024-12-10 23:18:13

Re: [SOLVED] Question about grub background on liveCD/DVD/USB menu

#3 2024-12-10 23:29:09

Re: [SOLVED] Question about grub background on liveCD/DVD/USB menu

#4 2024-12-11 00:05:56

Re: [SOLVED] Question about grub background on liveCD/DVD/USB menu

#5 2024-12-11 16:07:55

Re: [SOLVED] Question about grub background on liveCD/DVD/USB menu

#6 2024-12-11 21:57:50

Re: [SOLVED] Question about grub background on liveCD/DVD/USB menu

#7 2024-12-12 14:53:58

Re: [SOLVED] Question about grub background on liveCD/DVD/USB menu

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