Missing Grub Splash in F17

[chrnoble]

After a fresh install of F17, the Grub bootloader spash screen is invisible. I dual boot with Windows 7, and, if I arrow down a little, I can boot into it-- so it's there I just can't see it. I also encrypt the partition, and I have a Nvidia driver, which means the Password entry is invisible, too.
This is the same issue Ubuntu has had for some time, and I know how to fix ot on that distro. Fedora, not so much.
Any help will be appreciated. Oh, and a word of warning: I'm not very technical; you will have to talk to me as if I'm an idiot.

[glennzo]

How does one fix it under Ubuntu?

[DBelton]

quick fix?

edit (as root user) /boot/grub2/grub.cfg and scroll down until you find this section:

if loadfont $font ; then
  set gfxmode=auto
  load_video
  insmod gfxterm
  set locale_dir=$prefix/locale
  set lang=en_US
  insmod gettext
fi
terminal_output gfxterm

Change the set gfxmode=auto line to set gfxmode=1280x1024

What happens is that it tries to set a video mode that the video card doesn't support. Anything higher than 1280x1024 is supported only if the hardware manufacturer decided to include it. The VESA standard only supports video modes up to 1280x1024.

If that fixes your issue, then you need to change /etc/default/grub so that it will set it properly if you ever run grub2-mkconfig

[lmgutie]

Also very quick...
Add GRUB_GFXMODE=1024x768 to /etc/default/grub
Or another resolution compatible with your system.
Then run:
grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg
This will also be run automatically next time yum adds a new kernel and /boot/grub2/grub.cfg is updated by your system.

[DBelton]

Originally Posted by lmgutie

Also very quick...
Add GRUB_GFXMODE=1024x768 to /etc/default/grub
Or another resolution compatible with your system.
Then run:
grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg
This will also be run automatically next time yum adds a new kernel and /boot/grub2/grub.cfg is updated by your system.

Yes, that is the correct way to add it to your /etc/default/grub.

No it won't be run automatically the next time yum updates the kernel.

When yum updates a kernel it runs grubby, not grub2-mkconfig and doesn't even look at your /etc/default/grub file. It basically copies entries in your /boot/grub2/grub.cfg to the new kernel config.

[woodye]

I went from a dual boot with Fedora 14 to Fedora 17 a week ago and ran into the missing menu.lst problem.
I am surprised that this is still an issue since there were about 500 updates applied by yumex to Fedora 17.
Here are the steps I was finally able to make after spending many hours reading the posts and trying to
understand what I had read.

1. sudo gedit /etc/grub.d/00_header
2. find gfxmode=auto and change it to gfxmode=1024x768
3 save the 00_header file
4 sudo grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg
5 sudo grub2-install /dev/sda

It works for me! I now get the list of choices when my system boots up.

Thanks to all the people that gave their time and posts.

[DBelton]

Fedora 17 doesn't use a menu.lst file if you are using grub2. Legacy grub used a menu.lst file, but it was a symlink to /boot/grub/grub.cfg

[woodye]

Perhaps I should not have referred to my problem as a missing menu.lst when in fact the problem was that
I didn't get to choose which OS was to be booted. All I got was a blank screen which after a while booted
the latest Fedora.

Cheers, Woody

[DBelton]

Sounds like you hit the same glitch I hit awhile back where grub2 was trying to set the wrong graphics mode. After your system boots, edit your /etc/default/grub file and append the following lines:

(Do all of the following as root user)
/etc/default/grub:

GRUB_GFXMODE=1280x1024x32
GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD=keep
GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX=1280x1024x32

save the file, then run

grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg