Bootsplash on Debian Sid

05.09.2005 at 20:45

First of all i do normally not so much care about eye candy stuff, but recently my girlfriend told me that she found it quite boring to see the bootlog scrolling over the screen. And because i have never set up a bootsplash before i gave it a try.

Patching the kernel

First of all we need to patch our kernel, the patches can be found on bootsplash.org or bootsplash.de. They can be applied as usual.

cd /usr/src/linux;
patch -Np1 -i bootsplash.diff

Configuring the kernel

Afterwards we can configure our kernel with make menuconfig. The following options should be compiled in.

Code maturity level options  --->
 [*] Prompt for development and/or incomplete code/drivers
Processor type and features  --->
 [*] MTRR (Memory Type Range Register) support
Device Drivers  --->
 Block devices  --->
  <*> Loopback device support
  <*> RAM disk support
  (4096) Default RAM disk size
  [*]   Initial RAM disk (initrd) support
 Graphics support  --->
  [*] Support for frame buffer devices
  [*]   VESA VGA graphics support
  Console display driver support  --->
   [*]   Video mode selection support
   <*> Framebuffer Console support
   Bootsplash configuration  --->
    [*] Bootup splash screen

Userspace modifications

Next we have to set up some userspace tools, to accomplish this we add 2 temporary lines to our sources.list

cat >> /etc/apt/sources.list << "EOF"
 deb http://debian.bootsplash.de unstable main
 deb-src http://debian.bootsplash.de unstable main
EOF

Now we are ready to install a the needed packages.

apt-get install  bootsplash sysv-rc-bootsplash

Normally debconf should ask you a few questions and create a initrd.splash. However if this doesn't happen you can do it manually.

splash -s -f /etc/bootsplash/themes/default/config/bootsplash-1024x768.cfg > /boot/initrd.splash

Adjusting the bootloader

The last step is to adjust our bootloader configuration. Here are the relevant entries from my /boot/grub/menu.lst

title Debian GNU/Linux Sid / 2.6.13 splash
root(hd0,0)
kernel /linux-2.6.13-splash vga=791 splash=silent
initrd /initrd.splash

Enjoy your bootsplash.

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