Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

[CatDude]

Hello candy lovers

I have decided to start this thread for those of you who use the GRUB graphical boot menu (gfxmenu),
it is "Eye Candy" after all (albeit for a few seconds at a time).

I will post some of the message files that i have made (from the message file i compiled from the Suse source files),
any of those i post will be known to work with the GRUB packages i provided in This thread
They will NOT work with the original package i created (since been removed from that thread)

I have made these message files in two sizes: 800x600 and 1024x768

Unfortunately i could not get any widescreen ratio's working,
see next post for how i use GIMP to get around this.

If your display/monitor can handle 1024x768,
then i recommend that you use message files of that size rather than the 800x600 ones, they look better.

To start things off, i am posting two message files in both sizes, in future i will only be posting the larger size,
but using the information in the next post, you should be able to create your own in the smaller size.

You can rename any of the message files to whatever you like,
i only named them the way they are to let you know the size of them.


Please feel free to post your own creations here too,

All the best
CatDude
.

[CatDude]

///////////////////////// \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

Creating Your Own Message

\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ /////////////////////////

To make any changes to the layout, or create your own message file.
(edit the image, change the position of mainmenu or bootoptions, text colour whatever)


This is how to do it.

The message file: pupsta1 ( that is pupsta with a number 1 )
is used in the following Howto.

Step 1.
Unpacking the message file:

Create a directory to work in. (from now on referred to as WD1)

Put a COPY of the pupsta1 message file into it.
We will now unpack it.

Open a terminal in WD1, (right click: Window > Terminal Here)
and enter:


Code:

cpio -iv < pupsta1



( that is pupsta with a number 1 remember, it's probably easier if you Copy & Paste )
You can keep this terminal open, for when we re-pack it (if you like).


You should now have the following files inside of WD1.


16x16.fnt
back.jpg <-------------- this is the main image file (you can edit this, just DO NOT rename or resize it, and keep it as a .jpg)
en.hlp <----------------- this is the F1 Help file (you can edit this if you like, just be careful.)
en.tr
gfxboot.cfg <-------- this contains ALL the settings (you can edit this to change mainmenu position etc)
init
languages
pupsta1 <------------- DELETE THIS NOW or the final message will be bigger than it needs to be, and may not work.
timer_a.jpg



The interesting one is: gfxboot.cfg
that contains various settings that control the layout of what you see at the GRUB boot screen.
Hopefully you should be able to figure most of it out.

Some of the things you can change are:


The colour of the text.
The position of the menu entries on the grub boot screen.
How many entries are displayed before needing to scroll.
The position of the Boot Options text.


The only thing that you cannot reposition,
is the F1 Help (in the bottom lefthand corner).
You would need to compile from source to achieve that (see below)
You can change the colour of the F1, but not the Help (it wouldn't for me at any rate)


EDIT:
I have finally figured out how to change the colour of the Help text (next to the F1)
it appears that there is a typing error in one of the files in the SUSE source code.

So, if you would like to change the colour of said text
this is what you need to do:

After unpacking your message file, open gfxboot.cfg in your text editor
and find the line that looks like this:


Code:

panel.fg=0xffffff


and change it to this:


Code:

panel.normal.fg=0xffffff



That's it, obviously you can change the colour from white to whatever you like,
then re-pack the message file as explained below.

With regard to the position of the F1 Help
As mentioned above, the position of this is not something that can be manipulted via the gfxboot.cfg file,
it needs to be done when compiling.
So for those who may be interested, i have now posted several message files with it positioned in the upper lefthand corner,
some with and some without the animated penguins theme.
Those with the penguins, have been set to a 50% chance of them showing.

Step 2.
Re-packing the message file:

After making any changes, we now need to re-pack it.

Before you do that though,
make sure you have deleted the original message file in WD1


TIP:
Select ALL files in WD1 and note the size......(this is how big your new message file will be)
If after running the following command, your new message is bigger than what you previously noted,
DELETE it and then re-run the command again.

Or you could just provide the FULL PATH
for example:


Code:

ls | cpio -ov > /root/my-documents/WD1/6pups




So, in the terminal you kept open, (if you never, then open one in WD1)
enter:


Code:

ls | cpio -ov > 6pups



6pups is the name i am giving my new mesage, you can call yours whatever you like.

You will now see a new file (in my case, it is 6pups)
that is your new message file.


TIP 2:
It is a good idea to have a "Virtual Machine" of some sort, so you can test things without needing to reboot,
as it can take several edits before you get it looking right, personally i use QEMU for this.

Just for your information (and as a guide)
Here are some sizes that have worked for me.


back.jpg images ranging up to 815K
Final message files up to 1022K
I am not sure exactly what the limit of either is, but i think this is pretty close to it.


There is non of that 14 or 16 colour nonsense necessary either.

If you use a widescreen display/monitor:

As i mentioned earlier, i could not get any widescreen ratio's working,
so i use GIMP to squash my widescreen images down to 1024x768 as that gives the best result on my monitor.
The resultant image, when stretched to fit my screen doesn't look too bad.

It's best to start with an image the size of your screen (in my case that is 1680x1050),
then i scale image by reducing it to 1229x768 to get the right height, then scale it again,
this time breaking the links to the right of the Width & Height boxes, and reduce the width (only) to 1024.

This technique works better on some images than it does on others, especially if it contains text,
but most of the time it looks better than if i was to use a standard 4:3 ratio image.

[CatDude]

New message files will be added here.

CatDude
.

[mikeb]

Ok got here at last....

For grub4dos users the main point is to use version 4.4 which includes gfxmenu support. (and 256 inode and ext4 but not for the partition grldr is on).
The actual splash file is built in exactly the same way as normal grub.
Simply add
gfxmenu /path/to/splashfile
to your menu.lst

and enjoy....now to try and be artistic and get some graphics posted

mike

[CatDude]

Hi

Thanks for that mike,
as i have said before i do not know anything about grub4dos.

So if anybody has any questions concerning it, please direct them to the grub4dos expert Mr mikeb

CatDude
.

[mikeb]

Ok the ball rolls..these are 1024x768
mike

ps apologies for the messy menus from my test flash stick...

[trapster]

[hijack]

Thank you for my new background of metal_nipper. Very sweet pic.
Though mtpaintsnapshot.sh didn't pickup the mplayer video...hmmm.



[/hijack]

[CatDude]

@ mikeb
That splash_bird looks pretty smart,
is he a friend of the elephant.

@ trapster
You feel free to hijack mate,
as to "mtpaintsnapshot.sh didn't pickup the mplayer video"
i think that is normal, well it is from my past experiences anyway.

Edit:
@ trapster (or anybody that's interested).
As you are using Mplayer, you could try the following (it worked for me)

Start Mplayer and open Preferences > Video
change the driver from: xv...X11/xv to x11...X11 (XImage/Shm)

CatDude
.

[vellowax]

Here is my grub message...

[vellowax]

btw CatDude..how about splash image.
is there any link will guide me there?

thanks for all..

[mikeb]

@ vellowax greatboot screens....imagination works wonders ...I must try it sometime
By the way images 599 pixels wide or less get displayed in the thread

regards

mike

[vellowax]

[CatDude]

Hello vellowax

[vellowax]

[CatDude]

vellowax