HOWTO gfxmenu on patched Grub

From Gentoo Linux Wiki

GRUB would look much nicer if it was graphical. Well, Suse folk have made a package gfxboot that patches GRUB. Here's how to install in on Gentoo.

Grub with a graphical menu. More screenshots in http://www.geocities.com/g1powermac/ and here [1]

This is patched grub And gfxboot ebuilds from gentoo bugzilla

https://bugs.gentoo.org/attachment.cgi?id=123599 gfxboot_overlay.tar.bz2

https://bugs.gentoo.org/attachment.cgi?id=116496 grub-0.97-patches-1.5-ext.tar.bz2

NOTE: 3.3.24.3 Not Available --> just rename ebuild

Go to http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/SL-OSS-factory/inst-source/suse/src/ and look for the gfxboot package. If it is for example "gfxboot-3.3.24-27.src.rpm " rename the ebuild to "gfxboot-3.3.24.27.ebuild"

And this is our gentoo theme (looks really nice), but needs to be totally rewritten because of new gfxboot api

http://bugs.gentoo.org/attachment.cgi?id=58699&action=view

The bug report (check for updates)

https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=103272

Emerge using /usr/local/portage/gfxboot_overlay:

 PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/usr/local/portage/gfxboot_overlay"

Unpack overlay

# tar xjf gfxboot_overlay.tar.bz2 -C /usr/local/portage/

Digest if gfxboot package not available (see above)

# ebuild /usr/local/portage/gfxboot_overlay/media-gfx/gfxboot/gfxboot-3.3.24.3.ebuild digest

Move the patches to their appropriate directories

# mv grub-0.97-patches-1.5-ext.tar.bz2 /usr/portage/distfiles/

Emerge

# emerge =gfxboot-3.3.24.3.ebuild
# emerge =grub-0.97-r3.ebuild

NOTE: you can use themes USE flag to install default themes from SuSE

NOTE: gentoo.org-Krystal theme will compile only with old gfxboot

Extract and compile the theme

# tar -xjvpf gentoo.org-Krystal-gfxsplash-theme.tar.bz2 -C /var/tmp
# cd /var/tmp/gentoo.org-Krystal 
# make

Mount /boot and install the theme file

# cp /var/tmp/gentoo.org-Krystal/boot/message /boot/message

Also you can try default themes from /usr/share/gfxboot/themes/ in case of using themes USE flag (check [theme name]/boot/message file). they most likely work.

If you had any troubles with the above themes you can also just choose a theme from the following link (bottom of the first post)

http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=208855

Change splashimage line with this in grub.conf: (emerge grub may have already done this)

gfxmenu (hd0,X)/boot/message

An example grub.conf

timeout 5
default 0
gfxmenu (hd0,X)/boot/message
color white/blue black/light-gray

title Gentoo
        root (hd0,X)
        kernel /gentoo/kernel-genkernel-x86-2.6.20-gentoo-r4 root=/dev/ram0 init=/linuxrc ramdisk=8192 real_root=/dev/hdaY udev 
        initrd /gentoo/initramfs-genkernel-x86-2.6.20-gentoo-r4

Where Y is the partition where your gentoo installation is and X the partition where your kernel (and graphical bootmessage) is.

Re-install GRUB on your MBR, an example for hda3:

# grub
> root (hd0,X)
> setup (hd0)
> quit

Reboot and welcome your shiny new bootmenu.

More information on how to customise the menu screen can be found here: http://svn.faunos.com/pkgbuilds/extra/gfxboot/trunk/gfxboot.txt