Re: Partition labels in GRUB2 menu?

[Andrey Borzenkov]

On Thu, May 8, 2014 at 4:08 PM, Richard Owlett <address@hidden> wrote:
> Jordan Uggla wrote:
>>
>> On Tue, Apr 29, 2014 at 6:42 AM, Richard Owlett <address@hidden>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> During Debian installs I use manual partitioning.
>>> I give the partition being created a meaningful label.
>>> I would like that label to appear in Grub's menu.
>>> How?
>>>
>>> E.G.
>>> I currently have 4 flavors of Debian Wheezy installed (different
>>> desktops).
>>> Currently the menu shows long effectively meaningless string followed by
>>> "cryptic" partition designator (sa6, sa7, sa8, or sa9). I would like the
>>> designator to be meaningful (i.e. GNOME, KDE, LXDE, or XFCE).
>>>
>>> TIA
>>
>>
>> Modify GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR= in each installation's /etc/default/grub ,
>> whatever string you give for GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR will be used in the menu
>> entry titles.
>> http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub.html#Simple-configuration
>>
>
> That doesn't accomplish my goal.
> I've reread .../manual/grub.html. I suspect GRUB2 cannot, perhaps by design,
> do what I want.
>
> I wish, that after adding/deleting an OS, update-grub

Let's not mess things up. update-grub is program provided by your
distribution. Any comments about this command should be addressed to
your distribution, not to upstream list.

>                                                                             
> yield a grub.cfg of
> form:
>
> ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/10_linux ###

No, /etc/grub.d/10_linux as shipped by upstream grub does not support
what you want. As I already said, you can either modify it or disable
and add your own script that does what you want.

>
> There are three implied restrictions:
>   1. the first OS listed on menu shall be the OS on /dev/sda1

First you complain that grub menu includes meaningless partition
numbers and now you suddenly want grub menu to be dependent on
meaningless partition number.

>   2. the OS on /dev/sda1 shall be the default

You can set default menu entry as GRUB_DEFAULT. What is missing here?

>   3. all additional OS shall be in partition number order
>

Additional OS are provided by os-prober which is not part of grub.