Skip to main content

Preview a GRUB 2.x theme using KVM/QEMU

Project description

About

grub2-theme-preview came into life when I was looking around for available GRUB 2.x themes and wanted a way to quickly see a theme in action without rebooting real hardware.

It takes a theme folder (or just a single picture), creates a temporary bootable image using grub2-mkrescue and launches that image in a virtual machine using KVM/QEMU, all without root privileges.

grub2-theme-preview showing theme "gutsblack-archlinux"

(Showing theme gutsblack-archlinux)

Installation

To install the latest release from PyPI:

# pip install --user grub2-theme-preview

To install from a Git clone for development:

# pip install --user --editable .

Please make sure to install these non-PyPI dependencies as well:

  • grub-mkrescue of GRUB 2 (package grub-common on Debian and Ubuntu)
  • QEMUhypervisor that performs hardware virtualization
  • OVMF — EFI bios image for use with QEMU
  • mtoolscollection of utilities to access MS-DOS
  • xorriso of libisoburnfrontend which enables creation and expansion of the ISO format

Usage

# grub2-theme-preview --help
usage: grub2-theme-preview [-h] [--grub-cfg PATH] [--verbose]
                           [--resolution WxH] [--timeout SECONDS] [--version]
                           [--grub2-mkrescue COMMAND] [--qemu COMMAND]
                           [--xorriso COMMAND] [--no-kvm] [--debug]
                           [--plain-rescue-image]
                           PATH

positional arguments:
  PATH                  Path of theme directory (or PNG/TGA image file) to
                        preview

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --grub-cfg PATH       Path of custom grub.cfg file to use (default:
                        /boot/grub{2,}/grub.cfg)
  --verbose             Increase verbosity
  --resolution WxH      Set a custom resolution, e.g. 800x600
  --timeout SECONDS     Set timeout in whole seconds or -1 to disable
                        (default: 30 seconds)
  --version             show program's version number and exit

command location arguments:
  --grub2-mkrescue COMMAND
                        grub2-mkrescue command (default: auto-detect)
  --qemu COMMAND        KVM/QEMU command (default: qemu-system-<machine>)
  --xorriso COMMAND     xorriso command (default: xorriso)

arguments related to invokation of QEMU/KVM:
  --no-kvm              Do not pass -enable-kvm to QEMU (and hence fall back
                        to acceleration "tcg" which is significantly slower
                        than KVM)

debugging arguments:
  --debug               Enable debugging output
  --plain-rescue-image  Use unprocessed GRUB rescue image with no theme
                        patched in; useful for checking if a plain GRUB rescue
                        image shows up a GRUB shell, successfully.

Project details


Download files

Download the file for your platform. If you're not sure which to choose, learn more about installing packages.

Source Distribution

grub2-theme-preview-2.3.0.tar.gz (201.4 kB view details)

Uploaded Source

Built Distribution

grub2_theme_preview-2.3.0-py3-none-any.whl (9.3 kB view details)

Uploaded Python 3

File details

Details for the file grub2-theme-preview-2.3.0.tar.gz.

File metadata

  • Download URL: grub2-theme-preview-2.3.0.tar.gz
  • Upload date:
  • Size: 201.4 kB
  • Tags: Source
  • Uploaded using Trusted Publishing? No
  • Uploaded via: twine/3.3.0 pkginfo/1.7.0 requests/2.25.1 setuptools/54.1.1 requests-toolbelt/0.9.1 tqdm/4.59.0 CPython/3.7.10

File hashes

Hashes for grub2-theme-preview-2.3.0.tar.gz
Algorithm Hash digest
SHA256 574ac02da19965afa2845ca4c9c7319ec78082e6ca955a50c6d7a20a381c0943
MD5 0aef4f1e1db49a2c56363b509775e1e3
BLAKE2b-256 a6f70fe4b1869b1bc2879f4e12599d1fcf0ae118097541748608bb49a536d8bd

See more details on using hashes here.

File details

Details for the file grub2_theme_preview-2.3.0-py3-none-any.whl.

File metadata

  • Download URL: grub2_theme_preview-2.3.0-py3-none-any.whl
  • Upload date:
  • Size: 9.3 kB
  • Tags: Python 3
  • Uploaded using Trusted Publishing? No
  • Uploaded via: twine/3.3.0 pkginfo/1.7.0 requests/2.25.1 setuptools/54.1.1 requests-toolbelt/0.9.1 tqdm/4.59.0 CPython/3.7.10

File hashes

Hashes for grub2_theme_preview-2.3.0-py3-none-any.whl
Algorithm Hash digest
SHA256 64d02412efef5848ff0a4b3d3f8c64b42968213e2b5bf23c7ef57118be99d82c
MD5 933cd966eaf9647645493616333e696f
BLAKE2b-256 698a94b97e15f5960c2a49bb82896dc23977ec7747d93ab0320aa686077bf1cf

See more details on using hashes here.

Supported by

AWS AWS Cloud computing and Security Sponsor Datadog Datadog Monitoring Fastly Fastly CDN Google Google Download Analytics Microsoft Microsoft PSF Sponsor Pingdom Pingdom Monitoring Sentry Sentry Error logging StatusPage StatusPage Status page