Grub Customizer

reporting issues

Asked by Joseph J. Pollock

For quite awhile (maybe a year or two), grub customizer worked great (except fgrub menu background colors never worked).

First, my background image went away.

Then, for the last 6 months or so it runs fine, but has no effect on grub boot sequence in kubuntu precise.

Also, now, clicking on the general settings tab crashes it.

After the last few regular updates to my system the grub menu lost all customizations.

Where do I report these bugs and what procedure should I use to document these problems? I realize these may be several separate problems.

Question information

Language:
English Edit question
Status:
Solved
For:
Grub Customizer Edit question
Assignee:
No assignee Edit question
Solved by:
Daniel Richter
Solved:
Last query:
Last reply:
Revision history for this message
Daniel Richter (danielrichter2007) said : 		#1

You can file bugs. But I think it's easier to handle the complete problem here.

I sent an email to you containing information about the files I need to reproduce the problem. Please reply with the files attached.

Revision history for this message
Daniel Richter (danielrichter2007) said : 		#2

The crash is kubuntu 12.04 specific (both - version and flavor). It is not an error of grub customizer but it's an issue of the used theme engine. I described the reason and bugfix here: https://answers.launchpad.net/grub-customizer/+faq/2469

After fixing this problem: Please try the current version of grub customizer and tell me whether the other problems still exist!

Revision history for this message
Joseph J. Pollock (josephj) said : 		#3

Thanks for the quick update.

I followed your instructions and updated oxygen.

Just to make sure it took, I logged out and back in to make KDE restart.

Next, I ran grub-customizer. It no longer crashes as it did previously,
so that fix worked.

Then, I selected a new background image (just to make sure I actually
changed something so it would do its thing.)

I saved the changes and quit grub-customizer.

I restarted my notebook.

Got the same, text-only, white on black grub menu as if grub-customizer
was never there.

The menu is bordered by at-signs (to give you a clue as to where it
might have come from).

This is new to my system and only started occurring after I added the
ppa:kubuntu-ppa/backports (precise) ppa to my sources list (and got
around 375 updates at one time - including an update from KDE 4.8.5 to
KDE 4.11.3). Since then, it has updated further to KDE 4.12.0.

I'm including this because these backports are probably not perfectly
integrated into my system (although I have not had any problems so far)
and I don't want to make you spend a lot of time on bugs that might be
specific to the way my system is configured.

However, if there is anything further you want to look into or try, let
me know. I'd like to have grub-customizer working again.

I have a very small project of my own, so I appreciate the work involved
and the importance of user feedback.

Joe

On 12/23/2013 05:51 PM, Daniel Richter wrote:
> Your question #241102 on Grub Customizer changed:
> https://answers.launchpad.net/grub-customizer/+question/241102
>
> Daniel Richter requested more information:
> The crash is kubuntu 12.04 specific (both - version and flavor). It is
> not an error of grub customizer but it's an issue of the used theme
> engine. I described the reason and bugfix here:
> https://answers.launchpad.net/grub-customizer/+faq/2469
>
> After fixing this problem: Please try the current version of grub
> customizer and tell me whether the other problems still exist!
>

Revision history for this message
Best Daniel Richter (danielrichter2007) said : 		#4

The problem is, that your images are placed at /boot/grub. The 05_debian_theme prefers images at this location over the usual configuration (not logical imho). Normally you should see an image but you don't because the first image is 140-Galaxies-HST-deep-field.jpg which cannot be rendered for any reason (grub has problems rendering some images. I didn't find out why...).

This is the fix:
Move both images to another location (Should work from any other location. This also can be something like /boot/grub/wallpapers). Then select CatseyeNebula.jpg from the new path.

When the image works, the font colors work too.

The "@" or "?" on the border has another reason: most fonts doesn't contain these chars. One font with correct borders is "DejavuSans Mono".

Revision history for this message
Joseph J. Pollock (josephj) said : 		#5

This fixed it. Thank you!

I needed the following *additional* steps to get it to work.

Getting the font:
I found /usr/share/fonts/truetype/ttf-dejavu/DejaVuSansMono.ttf

I found instructions at
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=276691

But I don't have grub2-mkfont.

I do have grub-mkfont.

I used it to create /boot/grub/DejaVuSansMono.pf2

bigbird@ramdass:/boot$ sudo grub-mkfont --output=/boot/grub/DejaVuSansMono.pf2 --size=24 /usr/share/fonts/truetype/ttf-dejavu/DejaVuSansMono.ttf
Unknown gsub feature 0x63636d70 (ccmp)
Unknown gsub feature 0x646c6967 (dlig)
Unsupported substitution flag: 0x9
Unsupported substitution flag: 0x9
Unknown gsub feature 0x6c6f636c (locl)
Unknown gsub feature 0x6c6f636c (locl)
Unsupported substitution flag: 0x9

I added GRUB_FONT=/boot/grub/DejaVuSansMono.pf2 in grub-customizer Advanced Settings.

Skipped rest of instructions from the website and clicked save.

Restarted system and everything works - even the font background which never worked before.

Revision history for this message
Daniel Richter (danielrichter2007) said : 		#6

I wonder why you didn't use the font chooser of grub customizer. Isn't it working?

Revision history for this message
Joseph J. Pollock (josephj) said : 		#7

I didn't see it was there.

Doing the font the way I did worked, but looked funky (bad spacing).

I went back in and did it with grub-customizer and it looks much better now.

Remaining questions:

Given the magic we did to update oxygen, do I have to be concerned that
a future system update will undo that?

Do I need to keep any of the files used to update oxygen? I assume I can
at least move them out of the way somewhere. I have yet to learn git, so
I'm not sure of things like this.

Thanks again for your help. My grub menu really looks great now.

Joe

On 12/24/2013 02:56 PM, Daniel Richter wrote:
> Your question #241102 on Grub Customizer changed:
> https://answers.launchpad.net/grub-customizer/+question/241102
>
> Daniel Richter posted a new comment:
> I wonder why you didn't use the font chooser of grub customizer. Isn't
> it working?
>

Revision history for this message
Daniel Richter (danielrichter2007) said : 		#8

The package gtk3-engines-oxygen has been uninstalled. So the system thinks it isn't installed. This also prevents updates on this package. The only problem are packages which depend on this. When you'll install this package again, the manually installed theme engine will be overwritten. But I don't think there are packages depending on a specific theme engine.

The compiled files can be removed / moved away. They have been copied to their destinations during "make install".

Revision history for this message
Joseph J. Pollock (josephj) said : 		#9

Thanks again for the very rapid and helpful support.

Joe

On 12/24/2013 03:51 PM, Daniel Richter wrote:
> Your question #241102 on Grub Customizer changed:
> https://answers.launchpad.net/grub-customizer/+question/241102
>
> Daniel Richter posted a new comment:
> The package gtk3-engines-oxygen has been uninstalled. So the system
> thinks it isn't installed. This also prevents updates on this package.
> The only problem are packages which depend on this. When you'll install
> this package again, the manually installed theme engine will be
> overwritten. But I don't think there are packages depending on a
> specific theme engine.
>
> The compiled files can be removed / moved away. They have been copied to
> their destinations during "make install".
>