Grub2

Overview

GRUB2 needs patches to allow it to initialize video correctly and show the framebuffer console when booting. Another problem was that it did not have a TextModeHack.

For the technical side of these problems: GRUB2 did not pass correct video information in the linux kernel parameters due to it only supporting UGA video. Thanks to bean's patch, I was able to construct a working GRUB2. UPDATE: now with adq's updated patch, we no longer need to use screen.efi as it contains a TextModeHack now - thanks to him for the great hack!

Compile

To compile GRUB2:

• Grab the source and untar it
• Patch it with grub-gop-video-v1.patch

cd grub-1.98/loader/i386/efi/
patch -p1 linux.c < grub-gop-video-v1.patch

• ./configure --with-platform=efi
• Run 'make'

Once you have grub built you need to create a custom executable with all the modules you want

./grub-mkimage -d . -o ../grub.efi part_msdos part_gpt fat ext2 hfsplus normal sh chain boot configfile linux help reboot acpi pci search

• part_msdos : reads msdos partition tables
• part_gpt : gpt partition tables
• fat : reads FAT filesystem
• ext2 : reads ext2/3 filesystems
• hfsplus : apple filesytems
• normal : basic grub
• sh : uses
• chain : may be useful to run the original O2 boot.efi
• boot : allow it to boot
• configfile : reads the menu from a config
• linux : understand the linux kernel
• help : online help
• reboot : !
• acpi : May be needed to access internal acpi devices
• cpi : May be needed to access internal pci devices
• search : Enables searching for devices by label

Install

To use it on the device from an external stick:

• put grub.efi in the root of a usb fat partition on a stick
• go through the <esc> tapping and type: "fs1:grub" blind

To make this automatic:

• you can go to shell and edit the fs0:boot.nsh
• Put in the root of the FAT partition, file boot.nsh:

fs1:
grub

• And file startup.nsh:

fs1:boot2
fs0:boot

• Put in a grub.cfg file in \efi\tools (sample one linked, not working, you need to edit it). See elilo config in the other post for inspiration.
• If you do not need interactivity with the menu (letting it time out to the default item), you do not have to press ESC at bootup.

Based on http://jogglerhacks.blogspot.com/2010/04/grub2-on-joggler.html