Sorry for all the shouting in the subject line - but I'm very pleased with myself. 
It seems I have found the magic bullet to getting grub-pc (aka grub2) to work WITH graphic screen, 1280x1024, working hi-res 1280x1024 color tty consoles!
Background: I've been futzing with grub-pc since karmic trying to get a nice background and font at my screen's resolution with working console modes also. I've read lots of posts, seen lots of various ways - including using a different screen driver just to load plymouth - and everything has worked in one area but not another. Besides that - I hate 640x480 consoles. Why have this large expensive (well, it was back when I bought it!) cool lcd and run it at 640x480?
I felt grub-pc should be able to do what I wanted - I was right!
Notes: I am using grub-pc version 1.98-1ubuntu6 installed from Lucid. I use a dedicated grub partition (have for years) and I have seven bootable installs on my system some of which are on RAID partitions. I obviously have a more complicated than average setup and I make NO GUARANTEES that any of the below will work on anyone else's system. Attempt this at YOUR OWN RISK and have a boot-able CD handy. I have only tested this booting to Lucid but will report back on Karmic, Arch, openSUSE, Sabayon, and PCLinuxOS.
The edits:Since I use a dedicated partition and since update-grub doesn't really work as well as it should , I build my own grub.cfg. This is not the intended way to do it and I hope that someday - update-grub will work properly.
Here's the nitty-gritty:
The required lines and variables in grub.cfg:
These are in my header section:
if loadfont (hd0,2)/boot/grub/themes/fonts/10x20.pf2 ; then
set gfxmode=1280x1024x24
set gfxpayload=1280x1024
insmod gfxterm
insmod vbe
Note that the font directory is different from what yours will need to be. The four lines after are the keys.
These are in my theme section:
insmod png
if background_image /boot/grub/backgrounds/background.png ; then
set color_normal=green/black
set color_highlight=magenta/black
else
set menu_color_normal=white/black
set menu_color_highlight=black/white
fi
In this instance, the backgrounds location is one I created to hold my background files. I use and generic "backgroung.png" and link it to whatever file I want to display. Currently, I use a lovely photograph of my wife sunbathing al-natural so there is NOT a screen shot included with this post!
With the above edits, I got a nice 1280x1024 screen image, "sexy" background, and a larger and nice looking font. But the console mode eluded me. My TTY's were working, but little teeny colored scratches crammed into the top one inch of the screen replaced the readable text. I could actually log in and do things, but it was totally blind.
Finally I discovered this on the ubuntu forums:
This is amended to the end of the "linux" line of each menu entry
gfxpayload=true
and lo and behold, the console TTY's are now a lovely 1280x1024 with colored prompts. Accidentally - the plymouth splash looks better too.
Next step will be to figure out how to put a background image in the consoles!
As far as your system:
Add gfxpayload=true to /etc/defaults/grub in this line:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="gfxpayload=true"
and that will add it to each linux kernel update-grub finds. You may have to do the other edits manually or figure out where in the 00_header and 05_debian_theme files the edits need to go.
It seems I have found the magic bullet to getting grub-pc (aka grub2) to work WITH graphic screen, 1280x1024, working hi-res 1280x1024 color tty consoles!
Background: I've been futzing with grub-pc since karmic trying to get a nice background and font at my screen's resolution with working console modes also. I've read lots of posts, seen lots of various ways - including using a different screen driver just to load plymouth - and everything has worked in one area but not another. Besides that - I hate 640x480 consoles. Why have this large expensive (well, it was back when I bought it!) cool lcd and run it at 640x480?
I felt grub-pc should be able to do what I wanted - I was right!
Notes: I am using grub-pc version 1.98-1ubuntu6 installed from Lucid. I use a dedicated grub partition (have for years) and I have seven bootable installs on my system some of which are on RAID partitions. I obviously have a more complicated than average setup and I make NO GUARANTEES that any of the below will work on anyone else's system. Attempt this at YOUR OWN RISK and have a boot-able CD handy. I have only tested this booting to Lucid but will report back on Karmic, Arch, openSUSE, Sabayon, and PCLinuxOS.
The edits:Since I use a dedicated partition and since update-grub doesn't really work as well as it should , I build my own grub.cfg. This is not the intended way to do it and I hope that someday - update-grub will work properly.
Here's the nitty-gritty:
The required lines and variables in grub.cfg:
These are in my header section:
if loadfont (hd0,2)/boot/grub/themes/fonts/10x20.pf2 ; then
set gfxmode=1280x1024x24
set gfxpayload=1280x1024
insmod gfxterm
insmod vbe
Note that the font directory is different from what yours will need to be. The four lines after are the keys.
These are in my theme section:
insmod png
if background_image /boot/grub/backgrounds/background.png ; then
set color_normal=green/black
set color_highlight=magenta/black
else
set menu_color_normal=white/black
set menu_color_highlight=black/white
fi
In this instance, the backgrounds location is one I created to hold my background files. I use and generic "backgroung.png" and link it to whatever file I want to display. Currently, I use a lovely photograph of my wife sunbathing al-natural so there is NOT a screen shot included with this post!
With the above edits, I got a nice 1280x1024 screen image, "sexy" background, and a larger and nice looking font. But the console mode eluded me. My TTY's were working, but little teeny colored scratches crammed into the top one inch of the screen replaced the readable text. I could actually log in and do things, but it was totally blind.
Finally I discovered this on the ubuntu forums:
This is amended to the end of the "linux" line of each menu entry
gfxpayload=true
and lo and behold, the console TTY's are now a lovely 1280x1024 with colored prompts. Accidentally - the plymouth splash looks better too.
Next step will be to figure out how to put a background image in the consoles!
As far as your system:
Add gfxpayload=true to /etc/defaults/grub in this line:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="gfxpayload=true"
and that will add it to each linux kernel update-grub finds. You may have to do the other edits manually or figure out where in the 00_header and 05_debian_theme files the edits need to go.
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