Fixing the GRUB Menu so you can see the entire entry

Tired of guessing at what kernel the Grub Menu is referring to? Not sure what is regular boot and what is emergency boot?

I’ve created a script that makes changes so that you can see the entire menu entry.
Should work on any GRUB2 bootloader, by default openSUSE. With minor modifications should work with other distros as well.

Full details in the first lines of the script itself, including the steps for recovery if you wish to undo the script (if people really want, I can build a recovery script in a few minutes as well).

Only minor issue is that the openSUSE logo is in the menu items. Fixing that probably will require changing the background image, it’s not implemented as its own object. If someone wants to take the time to modify the background image to get it out of the way of the menu items, contact me and I’ll integrate it with this script.

With some imagination, I assume that it should be possible to run as an “after install” script or at least after GRUB is installed so that it’s immediately effective with a default install.

I also might now highly advise running this script on systems with bootloader problems so that each entry can be clearly seen. Nothing in this script should affect anything in the boot process except for how GRUB2 itself works and all the video problems we’ve been seeing in 12.3 are not GRUB issues.

Have fun,
http://putztzu.github.com/public_scripts/modify_grub_menu.sh

TSU

Have created a package including a modified background image.

Anyone can play with the posted script if they have an immediate need but will be posting a link to the improved solution in about 12 hrs. Running the existing script has only trivial effect on the improved script.

TSU

OK,
Here is the current and likely (for now) “final”
http://putztzu.github.com/public_scripts/modifyGrubmenu.v1.2.zip

Running the script will over-write the backup “theme.txt” if you have run this script before. If this is not the first time you’ve run this script, then you may want to preserve the previous backup by renaming the file using a “mv” eg

# mv /boot/grub2/themes/openSUSE/theme.txt.original /boot/grub2/themes/openSUSE/theme.txt.real.original.

Instructions:
As described in the script,
Download.
Extract.
Open a root console and browse to the extracted files directory.
Make the script executable

# chmod +x modify_grub_menu.sh

Execute the script

# ./modify_grub_menu.sh

This script can also be used to

  • Change to a custom GRUB menu background. Create or download your own background, place in the same directory as the script and modify the script’s “background=” reference and the command that copies the background to the proper location.
  • Re-position or re-size the menu items. I’ve simply expanded the menu to 90% of width but you can also move it (and the progress bar) up and down, left and right.

Have fun!

TSU

Have created a wiki page that displays screenshots of the default GRUB boot menu and what it would look like after modifying using the script I created.

https://en.opensuse.org/User:Tsu2/12.3/Modified_GRUB_Menu

TSU