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How to do this manually, not installing any tools?

muru
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Rulet
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  • How do you want to change it? Add a background image, change to another color, ...? – JanC Jun 07 '11 at 16:50
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    @Rulet if you know the answer please put it in as an *answer* and approve it. Editing the question is not the correct method. – Rinzwind Jul 03 '11 at 18:29

6 Answers6

40

This is my way:

  • Before 13.10:

    sudo -H gedit /lib/plymouth/themes/default.grub

  • 13.10 and later:

    sudo -H gedit /lib/plymouth/themes/ubuntu-logo/ubuntu-logo.grub

  • 16.04 and later:

    sudo -H gedit /usr/share/plymouth/themes/ubuntu-logo/ubuntu-logo.grub

  • 17.10 and later:

    sudo -H gedit /usr/share/plymouth/themes/default.grub

And change the grub background color as you want, in my case I change grub background to black (0,0,0)

if background_color 0,0,0 ; then
   clear
fi

Then, update grub

sudo update-grub

Please note that: there should be a space after the color value, other wise you will always get a black background. And as a gift, try using this value 35,00,60.

MDMower
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FireHeron
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5

It's very simple:

gksu gedit /lib/plymouth/themes/text.plymouth

and change black value with your color, in my case #000000 is black

black=0x000000

Regards

MastroPino
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4

Ok. I've decided to write the answer. I took instructions from here

In my case screen resolution is 1440X900. Somebody says that changing grub window resolution to actual resolution of monitor makes boot faster(but I don't see this take effect in last versions o Ubuntu). So I've changed and uncommented one line in /etc/default/grub to this:

GRUB_GFXMODE=1440x900

Then to change purple background of grub I created the image, in my case just black image with 1440X900 resolution and put it in /boot/grub. So my file is:

/boot/grub/gbackground.jpg

Then I've edited again /etc/default/grub and puted a line in it:

GRUB_BACKGROUND=/boot/grub/gbackground.jpg

then I updated grub configuration with command:

sudo update-grub

That's all. Now grub background is black.

Kris Harper
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rulet
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  • Additionally, if you want to use a custom image here, the wiki states that the image must not be "indexed", must be RBG, and it says you can export the image from gimp with these parameters to ensure compatibility. – mchid Feb 02 '16 at 05:23
3

I would first get your image, then bring up Terminal type

sudo nautilus

copy or cut image into /boot/grub.

Open the terminal and type

sudo update-grub

There you go.

Seth
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MrTippage
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    What? Just dropping an image in /boot/grub will make it appear at grub menu? I don't think so. – Eric Carvalho Feb 02 '13 at 18:44
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    @EricCarvalho It actually does. In `/etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme`, lines 163-168 there is code to search for and use an image in `/boot/grub`. – kiri Feb 05 '14 at 20:21
3

This is an excerpt from The Community Documentation on Grub2

Turning off the splash image: This may make viewing the terminal easier.

1.Press "c" to go to the command line and then type: set color_normal=white/blue or the color combination you wish to use.

2."black" as the second entry retains the menu's transparency and should be avoided as a selection if the user wants to work with a solid background color.

Nitin Venkatesh
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  • The purple background isn't an image though. – JanC Jun 07 '11 at 16:49
  • Yes, it's a color combination that you can set with `set color_normal=xxx/xxx` – Nitin Venkatesh Jun 07 '11 at 16:51
  • I think that only sets the colour (or transparency) for the menu, not for all of grub; and in any case there are lots of other possibilities, including creating your own theme. – JanC Jun 07 '11 at 22:31
  • According to here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2/Displays#GRUB_2_Colors, if you set the background color to black set color_normal=xxx/black , black should be interpreted as transparent so that you can use an image background. The purple background used to be an image in Ubuntu versions < 14.04 See answer by @rulet on this page (probably the same purple background image that shows as the default background for lightdm). However, on newer versions I think the file has changed or is a color value instead, I can't remember. – mchid Feb 02 '16 at 05:19
0

I wrote a ruby script to do the same. It actually edits /etc/default/grub and adds a custom background to it. Here: https://github.com/4p00rv/grub-background-changer

Kalle Richter
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Apoorv
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