Translation(s): English - Español - Русский - Français

(!) ?Discussion


Plymouth

Plymouth is an application that runs very early in the boot process (even before the root filesystem is mounted!) that provides a graphical boot animation, also known as bootsplash, while the boot process happens in the background.

It is designed to work on systems with DRM modesetting drivers. The idea is that early on in the boot process the native mode for the computer is set, plymouth uses that mode, and that mode stays throughout the entire boot process up to and after X starts. Ideally, the goal is to get rid of all flicker during startup.

For systems that don't have DRM mode settings drivers, plymouth falls back to text mode (it can also use a legacy /dev/fb interface).

In either text or graphics mode, the boot messages are completely occluded. After the root file system is mounted read-write, the messages are dumped to /var/log/boot.log. Also, the user can see the messages at any time during boot up by hitting the escape key.

Plymouth supports various "splash" themes which are analagous to screensavers, but happen at boot time. There are several sample themes shipped with plymouth.

Before Installation

Please check in the manufacturer website if your graphic card drivers supports modesetting or please check in the project page of the free/open drivers of your graphic card.

Installation

Sid/Unstable

aptitude install plymouth

It's possible you need install the DRM libraries of your graphic card driver. For example:

Intel Graphic Cards:

aptitude install libdrm-intel1

nVidia Graphic Cards (Nouveau free/open driver):

aptitude install libdrm-nouveau1

ATI Radeon Graphic Cards (free/open driver):

aptitude install libdrm-radeon1

Configuration

Sid/Unstable

Please edit the file /etc/initramfs-tools/modules and add the modesetting: For Intel:

# KMS
intel_agp
drm
i915 modeset=1

For Nouveau (nVidia):

# KMS
drm
nouveau modeset=1

Also you need configure the bootloader (as Grub2) for that charge the splash and change the resolution.

Grub2

Please edit the file etc/default/grub and change the resolution. Search the line #GRUB_GFXMODE=640x480 and uncomment. You can set a best resolution. For example:

GRUB_GFXMODE=1024x768

In netbooks you can put 1024x600 or 1024x576. For example:

GRUB_GFXMODE=1024x576

You can also write the color depth. For example:

GRUB_GFXMODE=1024x576x32

Please also search the line GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet" and change to:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"

Update Grub2:

update-grub2

Themes

As root run the next commands:

/usr/sbin/plymouth-set-default-theme --list

For display all installed themes.

/usr/sbin/plymouth-set-default-theme THEME

For set one theme. Where THEME is one of listed in the previous command.

update-initramfs -u

Apply changes.

Update the system

If you dont want change the default theme please don't forget apply the changes with:

update-initramfs -u

Plymouth official page: http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/Plymouth