10.2. Boot Loader Screen

The Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 boot loader is GRUB 2. You can change several parts of GRUB 2's appearance. The following sections show you how to change the distribution name, menu colors, and and the background image.

10.2.1. Distribution Name

By default, GRUB 2 displays a title containing the distribution name. You can change the title by customizing the GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR variable in the /etc/default/grub file.

Procedure 10.1. Setting the Distribution Name

  1. As root, open the /etc/default/grub file.
  2. Use the GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR variable to specify your own distribution name. The following is the excerpt of the /etc/default/grub file. Update the second line with the GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR variable: 
    GRUB_TIMEOUT=5
GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR=Our Corporate Distro V1.2
GRUB_DEFAULT=saved
GRUB_DISABLE_SUBMENU=true
...
  3. Run the following command as root to ensure the changes take effect: 
    grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

    Note

    You need to update the /etc/default/grub directory after every change you make in there.
Also, you can change the colors or the font of the text displayed at the GRUB 2 screen by modifying the /etc/grub.d/40_custom plain text file or by adding another file in the /etc/grub.d/ directory. You can choose from the following directives:
  • set color_normal=foreground/background
  • set color_highlight=foreground/background
  • set menu_color_normal=foreground/background
  • set menu_color_highlight=foreground/background
See the grub(8) man page for more information on the semantics and accepted values for these variables.

10.2.2. GRUB 2 Background

There is no GRUB background configured in the default setup. Nevertheless, it is possible to add an image to the boot loader screen.
Before you configure a background image for GRUB 2, it is necessary to have a GRUB 2 Unicode font installed for the gfxterm graphical terminal. No font is provided by default, so the prerequisite is to convert an existing TTF or OTF file to the PF2 format used by GRUB 2:
By running the grub2-mkfont command, convert an existing TTF or OTF file to the PF2 format. Name the output file unicode.pf2 to work correctly with the default configuration as written by grub2-mkconfig.

Example 10.1. Converting a TTF File to PF2 Format

This example demonstrates the conversion from the LiberationSerif-Bold.ttf to the .pf2 format. The new .pf2 format file is called unicode2 so as not to be confused with the existing unicode.pf2 in the /grub2/fonts/ directory. 
grub2-mkfont --output=/boot/grub2/fonts/unicode2.pf2 --size=24 /usr/share/fonts/liberation/LiberationSerif-Bold.ttf
Now, you can configure a background image for GRUB 2. The image file can reside outside of the boot/ directory.

Procedure 10.2. Adding an Image to the Boot Loader Screen

  1. Open the /etc/default/grub file as root.
  2. Edit the following configuration variables in the file: 
    GRUB_TERMINAL=gfxterm
GRUB_BACKGROUND=path_to_the_image.png
    Supported formats are PNG, JPG, JPEG, and TGA.
  3. Create a new configuration file with a background image: 
    grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg
  4. Reboot your system.
If necessary, the image will be scaled to fit the screen.