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Fardad74 10-07-2016 07:20 AM

can't access graphical grub2 boot loader menu screen
 
Helllo.
When my centos7 starting up i immediately press "esc" button to get into the grub2 boot loader and i expected to see a graphical menu of grub (as in many systems i saw!) but i see just a black and white screen menu without any background and so on.
So what can i do to have that graphical menu or did i incorrectly pressed "esc" button?

aragorn2101 10-07-2016 08:13 AM

Hello,

I am curious. Is it the first time you are booting this machine?

I use CentOS on a server and I don't remember ever pressing ESC to access grub. Normally the boot loader is the first thing which the machine loads, by default.

However, if you want to modify grub to add a colourful background or other things, that's easy. Check these out:
https://www.howtoforge.com/tutorial/...-screen-image/
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php...d_bitmap_fonts

Fardad74 10-07-2016 01:02 PM

still have problem
 
I Tried so many methods , but i couldn't configure to have that graphical menu with background or theme, here is my /etc/defaults/grub entries and later is black screen menu that i see now when i boot the system.

GRUB_TIMEOUT=5
GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR="$(sed 's, release .*$,,g' /etc/system-release)"
GRUB_DEFAULT=saved
GRUB_DISABLE_SUBMENU=true
GRUB_TERMINAL_OUTPUT="console"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=""
GRUB_DISABLE_RECOVERY="true"
GRUB_GFXMODE=1024*768*32
GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX=keep
GRUB_BACKGROUND="/home/fardad/cool-linux-wallpapers-25.jpg"
GRUB_FONT="/boot/grub2/fonts/unicode.pf2"

Fardad74 10-07-2016 01:09 PM

1 Attachment(s)
Quote:

Originally Posted by Fardad74 (Post 5615140)
No i'm using centos about two months, my friend. I Tried so many methods , but i couldn't configure to have that graphical menu with background or theme, here is my /etc/defaults/grub entries and later is black screen menu that i see now when i boot the system.

GRUB_TIMEOUT=5
GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR="$(sed 's, release .*$,,g' /etc/system-release)"
GRUB_DEFAULT=saved
GRUB_DISABLE_SUBMENU=true
GRUB_TERMINAL_OUTPUT="console"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=""
GRUB_DISABLE_RECOVERY="true"
GRUB_GFXMODE=1024*768*32
GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX=keep
GRUB_BACKGROUND="/home/fardad/cool-linux-wallpapers-25.jpg"
GRUB_FONT="/boot/grub2/fonts/unicode.pf2"

...

Fardad74 10-07-2016 07:04 PM

can't access graphical grub2 boot loader menu screen
 
Now i searched further and it seems everything is true in my /etc/default/grub file. i set gfxterm and gfxmode, even pf2 font with arial.pf2 generated by grub2.mkfont , background image and so on. but still don't see backgrounded menu .here is my /etc/default/grub output:

GRUB_TIMEOUT=30
GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR="$(sed 's, release .*$,,g' /etc/system-release)"
GRUB_DEFAULT=saved
GRUB_DISABLE_SUBMENU=true
GRUB_TERMINAL_OUTPUT="gfxterm"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="quiet splash"
GRUB_DISABLE_RECOVERY="true"
GRUB_GFXMODE=1024*768*32
GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX=keep
GRUB_BACKGROUND="/boot/grub/water-wallpaper-hd-17.png"
GRUB_FONT="/boot/grub2/fonts/arial.pf2"

can anyone help me? :( now i'm slightly realizing that centos 7 hasn't really graphical grub menu!!

frankbell 10-07-2016 07:30 PM

I don't believe CentOS uses a GUI screen. I have CentOS 7 in a VM and it uses a plain text display.

Remember that CentOS is a server distro. By and large, persons who run servers really aren't interested in eye candy. In the enterprise, many servers live in racks and are administered remotely via ssh or similar tools.

Fardad74 10-07-2016 08:12 PM

can't access graphical grub2 boot loader menu screen
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by frankbell (Post 5615282)
I don't believe CentOS uses a GUI screen. I have CentOS 7 in a VM and it uses a plain text display.

Remember that CentOS is a server distro. By and large, persons who run servers really aren't interested in eye candy. In the enterprise, many servers live in racks and are administered remotely via ssh or similar tools.

Thanks for help.
of course I know these, i just saw that backgrounded menu in a centos 6.5 , but maybe or surely it's not possible to have that on centos 7 with this two completely days searching on the web. really i surprised myself, too when i saw that backgrounded menu on centos 6.5!! maybe grub versions less that 2.0 support that on centos. however i was really Curioused and tried that. :)

plasmonics 10-08-2016 07:19 AM

I don't think this is anything to do with Centos. It is more of a Grub issue. Your file uses the old style method of theming and fonts. I would comment out grub_background and grub_font and insert the following
Code:

GRUB_THEME=/usr/share/grub/themes/starfield/theme.txt
The path name varies. You also have to install DejaVU fonts and grub-theme. The package names vary. The theme and font size are set in theme.txt. Finally
Code:

grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/efi/EFI/centos/grub.cfg
If Grub says it found theme.txt, it should work. If not, you have to troubleshoot. If there is error, it is usually because dejavu pf2 fonts missing.

Fardad74 10-08-2016 08:43 AM

New Status!
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by plasmonics (Post 5615387)
I don't think this is anything to do with Centos. It is more of a Grub issue. Your file uses the old style method of theming and fonts. I would comment out grub_background and grub_font and insert the following
Code:

GRUB_THEME=/usr/share/grub/themes/starfield/theme.txt
The path name varies. You also have to install DejaVU fonts and grub-theme. The package names vary. The theme and font size are set in theme.txt. Finally
Code:

grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/efi/EFI/centos/grub.cfg
If Grub says it found theme.txt, it should work. If not, you have to troubleshoot. If there is error, it is usually because dejavu pf2 fonts missing.

Thanks for your help, i tried all of that you said in previous reply, i added starfield theme as you told and grub FOUND my theme then i installed dejavu package and converted one of them from ttf to pf2 with grub2.mkfont command.

After all of these when i rebooted the system before that boot loader black screen be appear i saw an error that said : "invalid video mode specifications ?1024*768*32?" , i think i should change grub_gfxmode resolution , i guess it's a bigger size than the system requires, but what resolution?? how can i find out?

plasmonics 10-08-2016 08:55 AM

I would try commenting out grub_gfxmode. It should read the resolution directly off the efi firmware.

Fardad74 10-08-2016 09:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by plasmonics (Post 5615403)
I would try commenting out grub_gfxmode. It should read the resolution directly off the efi firmware.

I Deleted grub_gfxmode and it worked, the theme was appeared . Now only thing that changed is the boot loader, logs and login screen size before going to gnome desktop are in half sized than before were and are so small!!
however thanks for your help my friend.

plasmonics 10-08-2016 09:28 AM

You have to increase the font sizes using grub2-mkfont. I use very large fonts, size 20 and 22. Then edit theme.txt and enter those changes. The colours can also be changes using rgb hex format.

Fardad74 10-08-2016 10:00 AM

still have problem
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by plasmonics (Post 5615411)
You have to increase the font sizes using grub2-mkfont. I use very large fonts, size 20 and 22. Then edit theme.txt and enter those changes. The colours can also be changes using rgb hex format.

Not the font size, it's ok. i meant boot loader screen size, it's not full screen!

plasmonics 10-08-2016 10:23 AM

You might have to troubleshoot. Mine is full screen for all distros, incl Centos. The version of Centos I installed on my desktop is 7. Screen size is ok. One possibility is you might have to try grub_gfxmode with just the resolution, but without the color depth.

Fardad74 10-09-2016 01:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by plasmonics (Post 5615431)
You might have to troubleshoot. Mine is full screen for all distros, incl Centos. The version of Centos I installed on my desktop is 7. Screen size is ok. One possibility is you might have to try grub_gfxmode with just the resolution, but without the color depth.

Thanks a lot, now it's all fixed. :hattip:


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