grubby details of grub2

[Kevin O'Gorman]

On Sun, Oct 3, 2010 at 2:56 PM, Rashkae <ubuntu at tigershaunt.com> wrote:

> On 10-10-03 05:12 PM, Kevin O'Gorman wrote:
> > I'm running Lucid on my laptop, and have been transported into the
> > grub2 reality.  At least I think so because
> > of the huge changes in /boot/grub/.  I no longer understand much of it.
> >
> > Somewhat to my amazement I got it working.  I even dual boot to
> > Vista.  Problem is that I want to change
> > where that Vista entry appears in the menu, and I have NO clue.  I
> > heard that menu.lst no longer exists,
> > and that configuration now goes in grub.cfg.  Then I notice the
> > warning not to touch that file because it's
> > automatically generated.  I find myself unable to sort out the layers
> > of the new setup.
> >
> > Since all I ordinarily use is the first Linux entry and the Vista
> > entry, I'd like to move Vista up to the top or second
> > spot.  That's it.  I figure it might take me a day to figure this
> > out, but free days are hard to come by and I'm
> > hoping somebody can give me a short recipe.
> >
> There are, unfortunately, no short recipes.
>
> But I will start off by letting you know this.  There is no need to fear
> the warning about not editing grub.cfg.  Nothing particularly bad will
> happen to you if you do.  The only thing you need to be aware of is that
> the file is auto-generated, and will be regenerated whenever the package
> manager feels like (ex: when a kernel is updated, or even when you want
> to make a change to grub and run grub-update.).  So that makes it a bad
> place to make changes that your system needs to boot reliably (ie,
> custom kernel parameters, for example.).  If, however, the prospect of
> the menu returning to it's default state with little or no warning
> doesn't frighten you, then by all means, hack grub.cfg to your liking.
>
> As you probably already know, the grub.cfg file is generated by the
> scripts in the /etc/grub.d directory.
>
> Those scripts are executed in alphabetical order (hence why they are
> numbered,) so one easy change you can make is:
>
> mv 30_os-prober 15_os-prober
>
> os-prober is the script that finds and adds Windows to the grub menu, so
> by making it run before memtest, then memtest, at least will be below
> windows in the grub menu.
>
> You might also want to suppress the linux rescue mode entries.  You can
> specify that in the /etc/default/grub file.  Remove the # to uncomment
> "GRUB_DISABLE_LINUX_RECOVERY="true" ".
>
> After that, use your favorite package manager to remove any older kernel
> images you have.
>
> If these steps do not make the menu look the way you like, then the next
> step is to craft your own menu entries.  That's what the
> /etc/grub.d/40_custom file is for.  Copy the sections you want from
> grub.cfg file, and paste them into 40_custom.  Then, you give those
> custom entries top billing with:
>
> mv 40_custom 09_custom (which will make it run before the automatically
> generated entries)
>
> There is one important caveat to that last method which makes it the
> least advised.  You will have to manually make any updates to the custom
> entries.  If you boot from one of those entries, you will not
> automatically benefit from kernel updates that come as part of your
> regular system update process.
>
> Thanks.  Between the answers from you and Goh, I think I can handle it.

-- 
Kevin O'Gorman, PhD
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