[howto] Write an Openbox Pipe Menu

Those of you are using openbox might wantto utilize your coding skills into creating somethings useful for your desktop. I’m making this guide with selected references from the official one at the OB3 wiki and also I ill share my own created pipemenu here so that it gives you an idea about how to create your own!

Pipe menus are dynamic menus, built on-the-fly from scripts. These are referred to as “Pipe menus” since the script’s output is piped back to Openbox and used for the menu. There are a number of pipe menus written by various people available through the Pipe menus page.

A pipe menu can be created by placing the following into a menu file, such as menu.xml:

<menu id="ID" label="TITLE" execute="COMMAND" />

Thereafter the pipe menu can be referenced just like any other menu.

GRUB 2 [howto]

Click to enlarge

GRUB 2

GRUB 2 is derived from PUPA which was a research project to investigate the next generation of GRUB. GRUB 2 has been rewritten from scratch to clean up everything for modularity and portability. A mailing list and a wiki have been setup for discussing the development of GRUB 2.

GRUB 2 targets at the following goals:

• Scripting support, such as conditionals, loops, variables and functions.
• Graphical interface.
• Dynamic loading of modules in order to extend itself at the run time rather than at the build time.
• Portability for various architectures.
• Internationalization. This includes support for non-ASCII character code, message catalogs like gettext, fonts, graphics console, and so on.
• Real memory management, to make GNU GRUB more extensible.
• Modular, hierarchical, object-oriented framework for file systems, files, devices, drives, terminals, commands, partition tables and OS loaders.
• Cross-platform installation which allows for installing GRUB from a different architecture.
• Rescue mode saves unbootable cases. Stage 1.5 was eliminated.
• Fix design mistakes in GRUB Legacy, which could not be solved for backward-compatibility, such as the way of numbering partitions.

Multiboot Specification

Multiboot Specification is a protocol between a boot loader and an OS kernel. Because this specification is generic, you can use the protocol in your own boot loader and/or in your own OS freely. Follow this link, for more details.

Howto Install Grub2 in Debian and Ubuntu?

Here goes.

First remove your grub.

apt-get remove grub

apt-get install grub2 grub2-splashimages

The new GRUB2 splash images are installed at:

# ls /usr/share/images/grub/

Once you’ve rebooted, your default grub will load up and it has a new option called ‘Chainload into Grub 2′.When you are satisfied that GRUB2 works then you can select the second option, “upgrade-from-grub-legacy“

You change the grub images from:

/usr/share/images/grub/

# nano /etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme

and change the following line from:

for i in {/boot/grub,/usr/share/images/desktop-base}/moreblue-orbit-grub.{png,tga}
to
for i in {/boot/grub,/usr/share/images/desktop-base,/usr/share/images/grub}/Plasma-lamp.{png,tga} and save the file.

Reboot and enjoy!

Howto add “Windows Entry” in GRUB2 ?

Edit the /boot/grub/grub.cfg file!

# nano /boot/grub/grub.cfg

Add this at the end of your /boot/grub/grub.cfg

# (2) Windows XP
menuentry "Windows XP" {
set root=(hd0,1)
chainloader +1
}
With Windows Vista, via EasyBCD and NeoGRUB
Since EasyBCD's NeoGRUB currently can't understand the GRUB v2 menu format, chain-load to it by replacing the contents of your "C:\NST\menu.lst" file with lines similar to the following:
default 0
timeout 1
title       Chainload into GRUB v2
root        (hd0,1)
kernel      /boot/grub/core.img
Grub2 has a new concept of root partition detection.


Unlike previous version of GRUB, if your XP is in hd1 or sda1
then put hda1 and sda1 and not hd0 /sd0