GRUB is the current gNewSense default bootloader. In gNewSense metad, GRUB2? is the default bootloader. In this page, you will find common tips to make GRUB fulfill your needs.

1.  menu.lst

menu.lst contains what GRUB shows you at startup. In this file, you can change colors, partitions you want to boot, and other options. This file is located at:

 /boot/grub/menu.lst

Be sure to do a copy before editing it (as root):

 cd /boot/grub/
 cp menu.lst menu.lst.old

2.  Colors

You can change your GRUB menu colors by editing the #color cyan/blue white/blue line. This command is decomposed as follows:

 color normal highlight

highlighted color is used for highlighted entry in GRUB menu, normal color is used for all other entries. Color syntax is foreground_color/background_color. Available colors are:

 black, blue, brown, cyan, green, light-gray, magenta, red

foreground colors are limited to:

 dark-gray, light-blue, light-cyan, light-green,
 light-magenta, light-red, white, yellow.

3.  Number of kernel versions

In "menu.lst", you can control how many kernel versions will show up at boot. This is set up by the # howmany=all line. If you just want to have the latest kernel version shown at boot, just replace this line with:

 # howmany=1

4.  Timeout

Default GRUB timeout is 10 seconds. To shorten this time, adjust the line timeout 10 to your needs, default time is in seconds.

5.  Splash Image

GRUB can use an image as its menu background, image must be in xpm format, at a 680x480 resolution, 14 colors depth, compressed in Gunzip (gz) format. The image can be created with GIMP, then converted with ImageMagick using the command:

 convert -resize 640x480 -colors 14 myimage myimage.xpm && gzip myimage.xpm

And finally you have to add this line to your menu.lst:

 splashimage /myimage/location/myimage.xpm.gz

6.  Boot entry

With gNewSense default install, the first entry appearing in GRUB:

 gNewSense GNU/Linux [...]

will boot by default. If you want the second entry:

 gNewSense GNU/Linux [...] (recovery mode)

to be booted by default, adjust variable default 0 (for first entry) to default 1 (for second entry) in your /boot/grub/menu.lst file.

7.  Quiet/Verbose

If you want your system to display information on what it is doing during startup, you may want to remove the quiet option in the related entry:

 title           gNewSense deltah, kernel 2.6.24-24-386
 root            (hd0,4)
 kernel          /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-24-386 root=UUID=3a548818-d8ab-40fb-a432-d6160b22f00f ro quiet splash
 initrd          /boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-24-386
 quiet

to become:

 title           gNewSense deltah, kernel 2.6.24-24-386
 root            (hd0,4)
 kernel          /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-24-386 root=UUID=3a548818-d8ab-40fb-a432-d6160b22f00f ro splash
 initrd          /boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-24-386

This way, system will display information on what is going on when both initrd and linux kernel start.

8.  VGA modes

Sometimes, GRUB is loading the kernel at an incorrect screen resolution. To make it display the resolution you want, open your /boot/grub/menu.lst and add:

 vga=ask

to the line begining with kernel for your default boot entry. Next time you boot your computer, you will be proposed a list of display modes and their screen resolutions. There are two colums, one with one character from 0 through 9 and a through z (and then without any character), the second with a 4-characters code. Choose the mode you want by typing the first column character if any, or 0xXXXX if there is no character in the first column for the mode you want, XXXX being the 4-characters code in the second column.

If you are satisfied with the new mode you have chosen, edit your /boot/grub/menu.lst and replace vga=ask by:

 vga=0xXXXX

or

vga= (to be completed)

And voilà!