Cpio

GNU cpio is a tool for creating and extracting archives, or copying files from one place to another.

For instance, cpio can be used to customize your grub-screen (background) as follows:

1. Make a directory test as root:

mkdir /boot/grub/test

2. Copy as root /boot/grub/message to /boot/grub/test

cp /boot/grub/message /boot/grub/test

3. Change to directory test

cd /boot/grub/test

4. Extract the archive 'message'

cpio -i < message

5. Replace the file background.pcx with your own design (you'll probably have to conform to the same format/size/name).

6. In order to get the proper archive make a textfile "name-list" with all filenames in test in it and then:

7. Copy files named in name-list to the archive

cpio -o < name-list > message

8. Reboot.