5 ways to change GRUB background in Kali Linux
5 ways to change GRUB background in Kali Linux
This is a simple guide on how to change GRUB background in Kali Linux (i.e. it’s actually Kali Linux GRUB splash image). Kali dev team did few things that seems almost too much work, so in this article I will explain one of two things about GRUB and somewhat make this post little unnecessarily long and boring cause I like to write! So here goes …
Finding GRUB settings
This is usually the first issue everyone faces, where do I look? There’s a many ways to find GRUB settings. Users might have their own opinion but I always found thatupdate-grub
is the easiest way. If you run update-grub
in a VMWare/VirtualBox, you will see something like this:root@kali:~# update-grubIf you’re using a Dual Boot, Triple Boot then you will see GRUB goes in and finds other OS’es as well. However, the part we’re interested is the background image part, in my case this is what I see (you will see exactly the same thing):
Generating grub configuration file ...
Found background image: /usr/share/images/desktop-base/desktop-grub.png
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-4.0.0-kali1-amd64
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-4.0.0-kali1-amd64
No volume groups found
done
root@kali:~#
Found background image: /usr/share/images/desktop-base/desktop-grub.png
GRUB splash image search order
In grub-2.02, it will search for the splash image in the following order for a Debian based system:- GRUB_BACKGROUND line in
/etc/default/grub
- First image found in
/boot/grub/
( more images found, it will be taken alphanumerically ) - The image specified in
/usr/share/desktop-base/grub_background.sh
- The file listed in the WALLPAPER line in
/etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme
Kali Linux GRUB splash image
As I use Kali Linux (cause I like do stuff), we found that Kali is using a background image from here:/usr/share/images/desktop-base/desktop-grub.png
Just to be sure, let’s check that
.png
file and it’s properties.root@kali:~#
root@kali:~# ls -l /usr/share/images/desktop-base/desktop-grub.png
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 30 Oct 8 00:31 /usr/share/images/desktop-base/desktop-grub.png -> /etc/alternatives/desktop-grub
root@kali:~#
What? It’s just a symbolic link to
/etc/alternatives/desktop-grub
file? But /etc/alternatives/desktop-grub
is not an image file. Looks like I need to check that file and it’s properties as well.root@kali:~#
root@kali:~# ls -l /etc/alternatives/desktop-grub
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 44 Oct 8 00:27 /etc/alternatives/desktop-grub -> /usr/share/images/desktop-base/kali-grub.png
root@kali:~#
Alright, that’s confusing as! So
/etc/alternatives/desktop-grub
is another symbolic link which points back to/usr/share/images/desktop-base/kali-grub.png
which is in the same folder we started from. doh! That’s all I can say. But at least now we can just replace that file and get it over with.
Before we do that we need to check the properties of this file
/usr/share/images/desktop-base/kali-grub.png
and ensure that we will download same type and dimension file.root@kali:~#So this file is DEFINITELY a PNG image data, 640 x 480 dimension.
root@kali:~# file /usr/share/images/desktop-base/kali-grub.png
/usr/share/images/desktop-base/kali-grub.png: PNG image data, 640 x 480, 8-bit/color RGB, non-interlaced
root@kali:~#
GRUB background image properties
GRUB 2 can usePNG
, JPG
/JPEG
and TGA
images for the background. The image must meet the following specifications:JPG
/JPEG
images must be8-bit
(256 color
)- Images should be non-indexed,
RGB
desktop-base
package is installed, images conforming to the above specification will be located in /usr/share/images/desktop-base/
directory. A quick Google search found similar files. Out of those, I picked one.root@kali:~#
root@kali:~# file Downloads/wallpaper-1.png
Downloads/wallpaper-1.png: PNG image data, 640 x 480, 8-bit/color RGB, non-interlaced
root@kali:~#
Option 1: replace the image
Now we simply need to replace this/usr/share/images/desktop-base/kali-grub.png
file with our new file. Note that this is the easiest way without mucking around grub-config
files. If you are familiar with GRUB, then go ahead and simpy modify GRUB default config and run update-grub
.As usual, I will make a backup of the original file by renaming it to
kali-grub.png.bkp
root@kali:~#
root@kali:~# mv /usr/share/images/desktop-base/kali-grub.png /usr/share/images/desktop-base/kali-grub.png.bkp
root@kali:~#
Now let’s copy our downloaded file and rename that to
kali-grub.png.bkp
.root@kali:~#
root@kali:~# cp Downloads/wallpaper-1.png /usr/share/images/desktop-base/kali-grub.png
root@kali:~#
And finally run
update-grub
root@kali:~# update-grub
Generating grub configuration file ...
Found background image: /usr/share/images/desktop-base/desktop-grub.png
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-4.0.0-kali1-amd64
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-4.0.0-kali1-amd64
No volume groups found
done
root@kali:~#
Next time you restart your Kali Linux, you will see your own image as the GRUB background. (GRUB splash image).
This was the easiest and safest way, if you muck it up the worst, you will see a Blue background in GRUB but will still be able to login and fix things later. Now if you’re confident, lets move to better ways (bit complex) of changing GRUB settings. Next steps are more fun and works with any Linux using GRUB bootloader.
Now remember those 4 places GRUB looks for a background splash image? Here are those again:
- GRUB_BACKGROUND line in
/etc/default/grub
- First image found in
/boot/grub/
( more images found, it will be taken alphanumerically ) - The image specified in
/usr/share/desktop-base/grub_background.sh
- The file listed in the
WALLPAPER
line in/etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme
Option 2: Define an image path in GRUB_BACKGROUND
So you can use any of the above in the order of priority to make GRUB display your own images. The following is the content of/etc/default/grub
file on my system.root@kali:~# vi /etc/default/grubAdd a line similar to this: GRUB_BACKGROUND=”/root/World-Map.jpg” where World-Map.jpg is the image file you want to use as GRUB background.
# If you change this file, run 'update-grub' afterwards to updateOnce changes has been done using any of the above methods, make sure you execute
# /boot/grub/grub.cfg.
# For full documentation of the options in this file, see:
# info -f grub -n 'Simple configuration'
GRUB_DEFAULT=0
GRUB_TIMEOUT=15
GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR=`lsb_release -i -s 2> /dev/null || echo Debian`
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="initrd=/install/gtk/initrd.gz"GRUB_BACKGROUND="/root/World-Map.jpg
"
update-grub
command as shown below.root@kali:~# update-grubNow, when you boot your machine, you will see the customized image in GRUB.
Generating grub configuration file ...
Found background: /root/World-Map.jpgFound background image: /root/World-Map.jpg
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-4.0.0-kali1-amd64
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-4.0.0-kali1-amd64
No volume groups found
done
root@kali:~#
Option 3: Put an image on /boot/grub/ folder
If nothing is specified inGRUB_BACKGROUND
in /etc/default/grub
file, GRUB ideally should pick first image found in /boot/grub/
folder and use that a its background. If GRUB finds more than one image in /boot/grub/ folder, it will use the first alphanumerically image name.Option 4: Specify an image path in grub_background.sh
If nothing is specified inGRUB_BACKGROUND
in /etc/default/grub
file or there is no image in /boot/grub/
folder, GRUB will start looking into /usr/share/desktop-base/grub_background.sh
file and search for the image path specified. For Kali Linux, it was defined in here. Every Linux distro has it’s own take on it.