Grub theme install

[toast]

I’ve searched the forum and it appears that this exact question has not been addressed.

Today I installed a grub theme from the aur and it looks great.

But I’m wondering if I could just as easily have downloaded the theme direct from github, decompressed it, and copied it into /usr/share/grub/themes/ (making sure it had the same owner and permissions as the other themes) as I think all that pamac did during the install was put the files into that directory. Am I right?

This is what I see in the directory. Did pamac put files anywhere else, or is this it?

[me@machine themes]$ ll
total 20K
drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 4.0K Jun 29 11:33 .
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4.0K May 26 07:41 ..
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4.0K May 26 07:44 manjaro
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4.0K May 26 07:41 starfield
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4.0K Jun 29 11:33 tela-whitesur-1080p

[Wollie]

@toast

Am I right?

I don’t think so. The script is also adjusting /etc/default/grub and doing other things.

[toast]

Really? I made changes to /etc/default/grub to activate the theme. I’ve just opened the file up again and I don’t see any other alterations.

[linux-aarhus]

And surely you did a configuration rebuild?

sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

[toast]

I’ve run that command a lot recently as I’ve been teaching myself about chrooting into another system to repair boot problems, but I did not run it here. I just used sudo update-grub, which worked.

What is the actual difference between the grub-mkconfig command and update-grub? I still don’t know. I just know that you can’t use update-grub on some distros and have to go for grub-mkconfig.

[Denis_Pom]

file update-grub in /usr/bin

#! /bin/sh
set -e
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg "$@"

# workaround for https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/grub.git/commit/?id=3cf2e848bc03c44d30bb87e583d12efe7e7ccf75
# if grub is not updated in MBR/EFI dashes still won't work, hence we remove them
sed -i -e '/cryptomount -u/ {s/-//g;s/ u/ -u/g}' /boot/grub/grub.cfg

so update-grub calls grub-mkconfig

[toast]

@Denis_Pom

so update-grub calls grub-mkconfig

I had no idea. Thanks.

I’ve just had a look and I see it in my own file system.

So I’m probably best getting into the habit of using sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg as it’s the real command. The “daddy” so to speak?

[Aragorn]

@toast

But I’m wondering if I could just as easily have downloaded the theme direct from github, decompressed it, and copied it into /usr/share/grub/themes/ (making sure it had the same owner and permissions as the other themes) as I think all that pamac did during the install was put the files into that directory. Am I right?

In theory, yes, but then you also have to manually edit /etc/default/grub and run update-grub.

For that matter, the theme doesn’t even have to live in /usr/share/grub/themes/, because the Starfield theme which comes standard with grub is commonly installed in two places, i.e. in /usr/share/grub/themes/ and in /boot/grub/themes. Either location will do, as long as /boot/grub/grub.cfg knows where to find the theme, which is where editing /etc/default/grub and running update-grub come into play.

@toast

So I’m probably best getting into the habit of using sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg as it’s the real command. The “daddy” so to speak?

No, not necessarily. update-grub is just an easier way of doing the same thing.

[toast]

Many thanks for answering the original question.

I’ll have to try downloading one and just putting it in one of the two file paths you have mentioned. I want to see what happens, as I’m pretty sure that the install from the AUR changed nothing in /etc/default/grub. I had to go in and change the file path to the new file myself (and then run update-grub).