GRUB payload

This section relates to the GRUB payload used in libreboot.

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Setting font in GRUB (for reference)

You don't need to do this unless you would like to change the default font yourself. (this is just for reference. It has already been done for you)

The old font used was Unifont, and this had some missing characters: for instance, the border showed ??? characters instead of lines.

I tried DeJavu Sans Mono from this website: dejavu-fonts.org

Specifically, the version that I chose was the latest at the time of writing (Saturday 21 June 2014): this one

This is a free font that is also contained in GNU/Linux distributions like Trisquel or Parabola.

$ cd libreboot_src/grub
compile grub (the build scripts info on how to do this)
come back out into libreboot_src/resources/grub:
$ cd ../libreboot_src/resources/grub/font

I took Dejavu Sans Mono from dejavu (included in this version of libreboot) and did:
$ ../../../grub/grub-mkfont -o dejavusansmono.pf2 dejavu-fonts-ttf-2.34/ttf/DejaVuSansMono.ttf

I then added the instructions to 'gen.sh' script in grub-assemble to include resources/grub/dejavusansmono.pf2 in all of the ROM images, at the root of the GRUB memdisk.
I then added that instructions to the grub.cfg files (to load the font):
loadfont (memdisk)/dejavusansmono.pf2

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GRUB keyboard layouts (for reference)

Custom keyboard layout in GRUB (for reference)

Keymaps are stored in resources/utilities/grub-assemble/keymap/.

Example (French Azerty):
$ ckbcomp fr > frazerty

Go in grub directory:
cat frazerty | ./grub/grub-mklayout -o frazerty.gkb

You must make sure that the files are named keymap and keymap.gkb (where 'keymap' can be whatever you want).

Then from the above example, you would put frazerty in resources/utilities/grub-assemble/keymap/original/ and the frazerty.gkb file goes under resources/utilities/grub-assemble/keymap/

The build scripts will automatically see this, and automatically build ROM images with your custom layout (given the name) and include them under bin. Example: libreboot_frazerty.rom.

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UK Dvorak keyboard layout in GRUB (for reference)

ukdvorak had to be created manually, based on usdvorak. diff them (under resources/utilities/grub-assemble/keymap/original) to see how ukdvorak file was created

$ cat ukdvorak | ./grub/grub-mklayout -o ukdvorak.gkb

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Copyright © 2014 Francis Rowe <info@gluglug.org.uk>
This document is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International Public License and all future versions. A copy of the license can be found at ../license.txt.

This document is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See ../license.txt for more information.