This turns out to be much more painful than grub (v1) which had a simple menu.lst file. The new grub2 autoupdates based on kernel updates, which is great, but makes it a pain to edit basic configuration.
In my case I was attempting to change the default splash in an attempt to correct a framebuffer problem causing my ctrl-alt-f1 to not work. I went and updated the grub.cnf (equal to menu.lst file in grub1) file, but soon realized that it will be overwritten.
Reading further revealed that the trick is to update the /etc/default/grub file instead. Thereafter one has to run the update-grub command
So much to get ctrl-alt-f1 to get me a terminal!
(this applies to 10.2 atleast)
No /boot/grub/menu.lst. It has been replaced by /boot/grub/grub.cfg.
GRUB vs GRUB 2
The primary configuration file for changing menu display settings is /etc/default/grub.
No changes made in the configuration files will take effect until the update-grub command is also run.
