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Views: 21,669     Votes:  2 
Tags: boot   grub2   customization  
Link: 🔍 See Original Answer on Ask Ubuntu ⧉ 🔗

URL: https://askubuntu.com/q/1071418
Title: Adding a GRUB2 background image and custom font
ID: /2018/09/02/Adding-a-GRUB2-background-image-and-custom-font
Created: September 2, 2018    Edited:  June 12, 2020
Upload: March 26, 2024    Layout:  post
TOC: false    Navigation:  false    Copy to clipboard:  false


Grub Themes

The problem may have been caused by a grub customizer bug. An alternative to grub customizer (a third party program) is to use grub-themes which comes standard on every Ubuntu installation:

Grub Boot


Make Grub fonts

Even if you are just using regular grub, if you want a different font you must use grub-mkfont program first. The same holds true for Grub Customizer used by OP and Grub Themes used in first section of this answer.

Here are the fonts I have made for grub to use:

$ ll /usr/share/grub/themes/Tuxkiller2/*.pf2
-rwxrwx--- 1 root root 176923 Jun  9 16:41 /usr/share/grub/themes/Tuxkiller2/dejavu_14.pf2*
-rwxrwx--- 1 root root  20041 Jun  9 16:41 /usr/share/grub/themes/Tuxkiller2/droidlogo_bold_17.pf2*
-rwxrwx--- 1 root root  23339 Jun  9 16:41 /usr/share/grub/themes/Tuxkiller2/droidlogo_bold_20.pf2*
-rwxrwx--- 1 root root  31498 Jun  9 16:41 /usr/share/grub/themes/Tuxkiller2/droidlogo_bold_26.pf2*
-rwxrwx--- 1 root root  15244 Jun  9 16:41 /usr/share/grub/themes/Tuxkiller2/droidlogo_regular_12.pf2*
-rwxrwx--- 1 root root  19148 Jun  9 16:41 /usr/share/grub/themes/Tuxkiller2/droidlogo_regular_17.pf2*
-rwxrwx--- 1 root root 113623 Jul 11 17:05 /usr/share/grub/themes/Tuxkiller2/ubuntu_bold_italic_36.pf2*
-rwxrwx--- 1 root root  45391 Jul 11 17:08 /usr/share/grub/themes/Tuxkiller2/ubuntu_light_20.pf2*
-rwxrwx--- 1 root root  41020 Jul 11 17:16 /usr/share/grub/themes/Tuxkiller2/ubuntu_regular_18.pf2*
-rwxrwx--- 1 root root  46423 Jul 11 17:16 /usr/share/grub/themes/Tuxkiller2/ubuntu_regular_20.pf2*
-rwxrwx--- 1 root root  68602 Jul 11 16:59 /usr/share/grub/themes/Tuxkiller2/ubuntu_regular_28.pf2*

To create a font use the grub-mkfont program like this guide outlines: Increase Font in GRUB for High DPI Screens:

sudo grub-mkfont --output=/boot/grub/fonts/DejaVuSansMono24.pf2 \
  --size=24 /usr/share/fonts/truetype/dejavu/DejaVuSansMono.ttf

Then in your /etc/default/grub configuration file tell it to use the new .pf2 font file:

# More readable font on high dpi screen, generated with
# sudo grub-mkfont --output=/boot/grub/fonts/DejaVuSansMono24.pf2 \
#    --size=24 /usr/share/fonts/truetype/dejavu/DejaVuSansMono.ttf
GRUB_FONT=/boot/grub/fonts/DejaVuSansMono24.pf2

Finally run:

sudo update-grub

Reply to comment: Grub themes are built into grub so use:

$ apt policy grub2-common
grub2-common:
  Installed: 2.02~beta2-36ubuntu3.18
  Candidate: 2.02~beta2-36ubuntu3.18
  Version table:
 *** 2.02~beta2-36ubuntu3.18 500
        500 http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-updates/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     2.02~beta2-36ubuntu3 500
        500 http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial/main amd64 Packages
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