How to Change Default Grub Theme or Splash Image in Ubuntu 11.04 and 10.10

Ubuntu 11.04, Natty Narwhal and its predecessors Ubuntu 10.10, Lucid Lynx (10.04 LTS)  etc use Grub2 and it is possible to change the grub theme from its drab black and white to something more refreshing. The instructions for doing so are included below. In addition you can also change the resolution of the Grub screen to suit your high resolution monitor!

First install grub themes by doing this (by the way you can skip installing these and use your own .png image for this purpose).

sudo apt-get install grub2-splashimages

The downloaded files are located in the following folders

/usr/share/images/desktop-base/
/usr/share/images/grub/

You can list their contents by using the following commands

ls /usr/share/images/grub/

This would list the contents similar to whats is shown below

lifehacker@kritrimdual:~$ ls /usr/share/images/grub/
050817-N-3488C-028.tga                  Glasses_800_edit.tga
2006-02-15_Piping.tga                   Hortensia-1.tga
Aesculus_hippocastanum_fruit.tga        Lake_mapourika_NZ.tga
Apollo_17_The_Last_Moon_Shot_Edit1.tga  Moraine_Lake_17092005.tga
B-1B_over_the_pacific_ocean.tga         Plasma-lamp.tga
BonsaiTridentMaple.tga                  Sparkler.tga
Flower_jtca001.tga                      TulipStair_QueensHouse_Greenwich.tga
Fly-Angel.tga                           Windbuchencom.tga

You can also browse to the images, how they look, screenshot included below

Now edit the /etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme file by doing this

sudo gedit /etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme

For Ubuntu 10.10 and 10.04 search for the line that says

WALLPAPER="/usr/share/images/desktop-base/moreblue-orbit-grub.png"

and replace the path for the file that you want to use for your grub theme.  I choose this

WALLPAPER="/usr/share/images/grub/Windbuchencom.tga"

For Ubuntu 11.04 find the line that says (line near line number 157):

if set_background_image "/usr/share/images/desktop-base/desktop-grub.png"; then

Replace it with the path of the appropriate file name e.g.

if set_background_image "/usr/share/images/grub/2006-02-15_Piping.tga"; then

If you also need to change the color of text then you can modify the following two lines (for Ubuntu 10.10, 10.04)

COLOR_NORMAL=”black/black”
COLOR_HIGHLIGHT=”magenta/black”

For Ubuntu 11.04 the corresponding lines that might need tweaking for grub color are

echo “${1}set menu_color_normal=white/black”
echo “${1}set menu_color_highlight=black/light-gray”

Now save the file and update grub by running the usual command

sudo update-grub

It would throw out text similar to that shown below

lifehacker@kritrimdual:~$ sudo update-grub
[sudo] password for lifehacker:
Generating grub.cfg …
Found background image: Windbuchencom.tga
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.35-22-generic
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-2.6.35-22-generic
Found memtest86+ image: /boot/memtest86+.bin
Found Windows 7 (loader) on /dev/sda1
done

After this restart your computer to test the new grub theme. Looks much better? If you want to increase the resolution of the grub screen, read on!

First you need to find out the modes which your graphic card supports via VBE, you can do that by pressing c on the grub boot menu, this would open a grub command prompt, type the following there

vbeinfo

It is going to spit out several lines which tells you all the supported resolutions. Choose the one you want to use, and after booting back in Ubuntu, uncomment the following line in/etc/default/grub

#GRUB_GFXMODE=640×480

replace it with the resolution you want to use, I used this

GRUB_GFXMODE=1920×1200

Now, it would only be appropriate if you use an image corresponding to the desired grub resolution for the Grub background, so specify the path for the image that has this resolution as per your Ubuntu version, if you use an incorrect resolution image, it might result in stretching.

Now regenerate the Grub.cfg by running the command

sudo update-grub

That is all, now you should have a high resolution grub boot menu (the screenshot below is of low resolution)

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