boot menu

[Basil Chupin]

On 02/04/13 22:06, Colin Law wrote:
> On 2 April 2013 11:04, Basil Chupin <blchupin at iinet.net.au> wrote:
>> On 02/04/13 02:29, Nils Kassube wrote:
>>> Basil Chupin wrote:
>>>> To be very honest I don't know much about Mint (except that I did try
>>>> it some 3 or so years ago) and don't know if it uses grub (legacy) or
>>>> grub2 but the use of "update-grub" indicates to me that it is using
>>>> grub (legacy) and that grub-update only recreated the grub.cfg in
>>>> Mint's /boot/grub/grub.cfg.
>>>>
>>>> And doing "grub-update" would, naturally, also have picked up that you
>>>> have another/other distros installed and included them in the grub
>>>> boot menu (when you boot your computer).
>>>>
>>>> Re where "grub2-mkconfig" comes in. As far as I am aware the use of
>>>> "grub-update" is no longer used in distros which use *grub2*.
>>>> "grub-update" has been replaced with "grub2-mkconfig -o
>>>> /boot/grub2/grub.cfg" - which is why I mentioned it thinking that you
>>>> were dealing with grub2.
>>> Basil, I suppose you are mixing up suse / fedora / whatever with the way
>>> Ubuntu handles grub. The script run on both grub-legacy and grub2 is
>>> "update-grub". There is no grub2-mkconfig in *Ubuntu 12.04. And as Mint
>>> is based on Ubuntu as far as I know, the script is also "update-grub"
>>> for Mint.
>>
>> Thanks Nils.
>>
>> Nothing like uniformity between distros :-( .
>>
>> Had my first look "inside" Ubuntu several minutes ago and adjusted grub.cfg
>> because there were 2 versions of the kernel in /boot (I deleted the older
>> one). Carried this thru to my main, controlling, bootloader. Keeps one on
>> one's toes when you have to work with "grub..." and "grub2...." :-) .
> I thought one was not supposed to edit /boot/grug/grub.cfg,

You don't edit grub.cfg, you are right. My choice of the word "adjusted" 
grub.cfg has misled you.

It all depends on what you are trying to achieve by altering grub.cfg.

If, for example, you want to change the name of the distro - which 
appears in the boot grub menu (for example, from Ubuntu to Freddy) - or 
alter the time-out or the *order* of which distro gets booted 
automatically without your manual intervention, then you modify 
/etc/default/grub and then run grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg 
(this, btw, is equivalent to running grub-update but as grub2 is now the 
default and has replaced grub (legacy) I, personally, prefer to keep to 
using the one terminology).

However, in my case all I did was delete the old kernel and its 
associated hanger-ons (initrd etc) which were shown in /etc/boot so 
there was no need to alter anything in /etc/default/grub and I simply 
ran grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg.

Doing this grub-mkconfg Quick-step picks up the version(s) of the 
*kernel* listed in /boot and generates a copy of grub.cfg which gives 
you 2 entries in the boot menu: one "Main" entry and a second entry 
called Advanced Options. I'll leave it up to you to see what they 
contain - and you will see what is in them by pressing the character "e" 
when you highlight a boot option (press F10 to boot with that 
highlighted option or use ESC to get back to the "Main" menu).

>   I thought
> one should edit /etc/default/grub and run update-grub.
>
> Colin

BC

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