TODO: this guide should be reviewed and updated. Some info might be out of date.
GNU GRUB already has excellent documentation, but there are aspects of GNU Boot that deserve special treatment. GNU Boot provides the option to boot GNU GRUB directly, running on bare metal (instead of using BIOS or UEFI services).
The GNU+Linux section also has GNU Boot specific guides for dealing with GNU+Linux distributions when using GNU GRUB directly, in this setup. A similar section exists for BSD operating systems
It is possible to use any keymap in GNU GRUB.
Keymaps are stored in resources/grub/keymap/
You can use the ckbcomp program to generate a keymap, based on Xorg keymap files:
ckbcomp fr > frazerty
When you build GRUB from source, you can use the grub-mklayout program to create a special keymap file for GRUB. Learn how to build GRUB
When you’ve built GRUB, using GNU Boot, take your kepmap file (generated by ckbcomp) and run it through grub-mklayout like so:
cat frazerty | ./grub/grub-mklayout -o frazerty.gkb
Place the newly created .gkb file under resources/grub/keymap in lbmk. When you build GNU Boot, an image with GRUB payload and your newly created keymap will be available under the bin/ directory. Learn how to build GNU Boot images
Many keymaps exist in the GNU Boot build system, but sometimes you must manually tweak the file created by ckbcomp, adjusting the scan codes in that file, before converting to a GRUB keymap file. Therefore, it would be unwise to automatically add all keymaps in GRUB.
If you’ve added a keymap to lbmk, and it works, please submit a patch!
Markdown file for this page: https://gnu.org/software/gnuboot/web/docs/grub/index.md