[TriLUG] Graphical Grub

[Tanner Lovelace]

Sinner from the Prairy wrote:

>> Am I missing something?  Doesn't Mandrake already come with a graphical
>> Grub (and graphical Lilo)?
> 
> 
> Yes and yes. Grub since 8.0 at least.
> 


Actually, the answers to those questions are *no* and yes.


Mandrake first shipped with Grub in version 7.x (where
I don't remember just what minor version x was...)  The
7.x versions it had modified the menu to make it look
nicer, but it was always just in ansi text mode.
Mandrake has never come with a graphical version of grub. It has a
graphical version of lilo (at least as of 8.1), but not grub.
It does, however, include the program Aurora, which does a
graphical boot sequence.  The standard version of grub does
not include a graphical option.  The patch to make grub
graphical originally came from Paulo César Pereira de
Andrade of Conectiva Linux and was "forward ported" to
the redhat version in June (as seen from this Changelog
entry:

* Mon Jun 25 2001 Jeremy Katz <katzj at redhat.com>
- update to current CVS
- forward port VGA16 patch from Paulo César Pereira de
   Andrade <pcpa at conectiva.com.br>

Mandrake has never added it to their version of grub.  They have,
however, added patches so that it can boot directly from reiserfs,
jfs, and xfs (I'm using xfs only on my laptop and it works great).

Thanks to Kevin for the splashimage parameter.  I wasn't aware
that grub could read gziped files by default, but after crawling
around the source code I discovered that it could.  Coolness!
(Now it just needs to add the ability to read bzip2'd files... ;-)
I'm curious, however, Kevin, if that is the only parameter needed.
In my exploration of the source code, it seems to me that you also
may need to specify:

display vga16

Is this indeed the case?  Or will it automatically switch to it
when it notices the "splashimage" parameter?  (I know I could
just try it out myself, but I like to be extra careful with a
program that if I screw up could mess up my ability to easily
get back into my computer...)

I was able to port the Redhat graphical patch over to the Mandrake
version of grub and got it to work, mostly (there's still a problem
with the cursor not being properly erased, but I've seen mention of
it in various changelog messages, so I just need to chase down the
appropriate patch).  I'm not entirely sold on the idea, however, mainly
because the fonts in vga16 mode are so much blockier than those
in normal ansi mode...  Once I get everything working, however,
I'd be more than happy to make the rpm available if anyone using
mandrake would be interested in trying it...

Tanner
-- 
Tanner Lovelace | lovelace at wayfarer.org | http://wtl.wayfarer.org/
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