[LUGSB] Re: Hi-Res GRUB splash images

[James Crasta]

On Mon, Nov 10, 2008 at 11:26 PM, Arjun G. Menon <arjungmenon at gmail.com> wrote:
> I was just wondering if there is any way to have high-resolution
> images (1280x800) as background on GRUB?

Do you actually mean GRUB? or do you mean BootSplash?   GRUB, the
bootloader where you choose your OS, does not support high resolution
VESA modes, and just runs at the default VGA mode available which is
640x480 and 16 colors.   Once you start loading your kernel, you can
have it immediately switch to a high resolution with high colors and
BootSplash can show a full-size image.  This may be tricky at 1280x800
since that's not a classic VESA mode, but 1024x768 will probably scale
to full screen.   If you only have one OS, you can just configure grub
to skip the menu and jump right to your distro and the short amount of
time you're at low resolution will be nearly unnoticeable.  This makes
recovery from botched configs hard though.

If you actually want a graphical bootloader while retaining the
ability to choose your OS, your choices are limited.

If your machine in question is a PC, you can try Grub 2
(http://grub.enbug.org/) which has support for VESA modes.  I wouldn't
recommend this unless you're comfortable restoring your MBR or have an
extra small partition to play around with Grub 2 while retaining Grub
1 on your MBR.   Anyway Grub 2 is in development, but their intent is
a graphical bootloader which can run at higher resolutions.   Your
mileage might vary, I haven't personally tried it.

If your machine in question is an intel mac, rEFIt (
http://refit.sourceforge.net ) is a very nice (and stable) graphical
bootloader for that, that lets you choose from any available OSes
(OSX, linux, Windows) and can recognize removable drives containing
OSes and bootable CD's on the fly.  The reason it works is that it's
coded for EFI and not BIOS, and Apple's EFI loader contains full
graphics card and sound support.

On Sat, Nov 15, 2008 at 12:44 PM,  <GoinEasy at eniinternet.com> wrote:
> Sometimes (like in pure Debian) resolution is set low during grub/boot
> process so you might want to add vga=791 to the kernel line in

This will only set the vesa mode for your linux distro, not the GRUB bootloader.