On Tue, Jun 15, 2021 at 02:56:48PM +0100, Neil Bothwick wrote > On Mon, 14 Jun 2021 16:25:00 -0400, Walter Dnes wrote: > > > Unfortunately, just like the standard grub.cfg, it's a tiny-looking > > text font on my 1920x1080 monitor that I have to squint at. Next > > step... what do I do to get a functioning GUI? > > Set up a theme, you can use one of the supplied examples as a base, with > a larger font. > > https://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub/grub.html#Fonts
After more reboots than I want to remember, I'm finally where I want to be. Thanks for everybody's help. I found a thread on Stackexchange https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/31672/can-grub-font-size-be-customised which supplied the final piece of the puzzle. That thread was started 9 years, 4 months ago. grub1 is now a distant memory, so change all mentions of "grub2" to plain "grub". As per the Stackexchange thread, there's a grub-mkfont command that can translate ttf files to pf2 files readable by grub. ***AND YOU CAN RESIZE THE FONT WHILE YOURE AT IT***. So I ran grub-mkfont, with "-s 64" which means 64 pixels high... grub-mkfont -s 64 -o /boot/grub/fonts/HonkingBigFont.pf2 /usr/share/fonts/dejavu/DejaVuSansMono-Bold.ttf My grub.cfg follows. Yours would obviously differ in details. ==================================================================== search --set=root --label rootfs sleep 2 set timeout=15 set gfxmode=640x480 set gfxpayload=keep loadfont /boot/grub/fonts/HonkingBigFont.pf2 insmod all_video insmod gfxterm terminal_output gfxterm menuentry 'Linux Experimental' { linux /vmlinuz-experimental root=/dev/sda2 ro noexec=on net.ifnames=0 intel_pstate=disable ipv6.disable=1 } menuentry 'Linux Experimental Recovery' { linux /vmlinuz-experimental root=/dev/sda2 ro } menuentry 'Linux Production' { linux /vmlinuz-production root=/dev/sda2 ro noexec=on net.ifnames=0 i ntel_pstate=disable ipv6.disable=1 } menuentry 'Linux Production Recovery' { linux /vmlinuz-production root=/dev/sda2 ro } ==================================================================== The menu output is Y-U-U-U-U-U-GE, which makes it nice and readable on my 1920x1080 monitor. There's a cosmetic problem in that this font doesn't have "line-drawing characters"... 1) The box around the menu is composed of garbage characters. 2) The bit about using up-arrow and down-arrow keys to select also shows the same garbage characters. grub-mkfont man page says "Convert common font file formats into PF2", so I may look at other character sets that have line-drawing characters. -- Walter Dnes <waltd...@waltdnes.org> I don't run "desktop environments"; I run useful applications