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The command that needs to be run to generate the GRUB2 grub.cfg configuration file is grub-mkconfig. This command is specifically designed to create the configuration file that GRUB2 uses to define how it presents the boot menu and how it manages the operating systems that can be booted.
When you execute grub-mkconfig, it scans your system to detect the available operating systems and creates the grub.cfg file accordingly. This process includes automatically detecting kernels, file systems, and any other relevant configurations that impact the booting process.
While the other commands may also be related to managing GRUB, they serve different purposes. For example, grub-install is used to install the GRUB bootloader to a device, which is necessary to ensure that GRUB can actually load during the boot process. update-grub is often treated as a convenience wrapper that calls grub-mkconfig but is not the command responsible for generating the configuration file directly. grub-update is not a standard GRUB command related to generating the configuration file.
Overall, grub-mkconfig is the primary command for creating or updating the grub.cfg file based on the current boot settings and available operating systems.