Configuring grub / grub2 to indicate the boot menu items

[Christopher Moore]

Steve,
A point of clarification on grub2.  To build the grub.cfg file you do the following:
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

This script replaces  update-grub.  The grub.cfg file is built from the /etc/default/grub and 
/etc/conf.d/grub/*

Chris
On Thu, Oct 07, 2010 at 01:18:16PM -0700, Steve Holmes wrote:
> I have to add one other point here; you need to be sure that your
> /etc/default/grub file has the TERMINAL=console uncommentted.  If not,
> you will get a graphical display and for whatever reason, the
> Control-G trick won't work unless terminal is set to console.  When I
> go with the graphical default, I can have the highest resolution
> possible and have it passed onto the kernel and I end up with a dis
> play of 92 lines plus 256 columns.  That's an interesting side effect
> but with a console that big, it ends up being slow to fill.  So there
> seems to be a trade off here between a graphical terminal with no menu
> item beeps or a text console defaulting to yucky 80 by 25 size but
> have a beep on the menu item of your choice.
> 
> On Thu, Oct 07, 2010 at 02:45:58AM -0700, Steve Holmes wrote:
> > OK, I got it to work with the new grub configurations.  Let me
> > describe what I did here.
> > 
> > With my grub2 setup on my archlinux system, I went into the 10linux
> > script found in /etc/grub.d; I believe this file is a standard issue
> > script for all distros using grub2.  Not sure if any of it was
> > customized by Arch developers or not.  I looked for the second
> > occurrence of
> > linux_entry.  The first occurrence is a function definition so we
> > don't want to change anything there.  The next or second occurrence
> > from the top will build the first menu option in your grub.cfg file.
> > The first quoted string following the 'linux_entry' call specifies the
> > menu title.  It currently begins with the variable ${OS}.  I just
> > stuck a Ctrl-G in front of this variable and immediately following the
> > opening quote mark.  Myself, I used emacs to do this by pressing c-q
> > followed by the Ctrl-G character.
> > 
> > After that, I saved and closed the file and did 
> > grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
> > to regenerate the grub.cfg file.  On my system, I do not have a
> > update-grub command.  Dunno if that is a local Arch modification or if
> > update-grub is just on other distros.  Anyway, I looked at grub.cfg
> > for good measure and saw the ^G in the right spot.  I reboot and I
> > have the beep on the top menu item with this new configuration.  It
> > works like it always did before too.
> > 
> > The only side effect for me is I have to re-figure how to get the
> > right parms in for me to have a nice big display again.  But that's
> > another issue for me to work out.  I had been using an old grub.cfg
> > for a long time and never got around to using the new config file
> > system for grub.
> > 
> > On Tue, Oct 05, 2010 at 08:12:09AM -0400, Kitty Litter wrote:
> > >        I am hardly a grub 2 expert but you need to edit
> > > /etc/default/grub and uncomment the line grub_init_tune and modify
> > > the tempo, frequency and duration to get the desired beep. Then you
> > > must run update-grub as root to incorporate these changes into
> > > /boot/grub/grub.cfg. You aren't supposed to edit this file directly.
> > > If you try putting a ctrl-g in the title of a menu in
> > > /etc/grub.d/10_linux you will get a beep when you press enter on an
> > > item but not when you arrow passed it, at least that was the
> > > behavior when I tried it 6 months ago. After you run update-grub you
> > > can look at /boot/grub/grub.cfg to see what order the menu items
> > > will be in. The menu items don't appear to wrap so if you want the
> > > last item you could arrow down a bunch of times and press enter.
> > > Remember you must run update-grub to incorporate these changes into
> > > grub.cfg. Also, info grub for grub docs.
> > > 
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Speakup mailing list
> > > Speakup at braille.uwo.ca
> > > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup at braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup