How to hide the booting process?

Booting, installing, newbie
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Pizzasgood
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#16 Post by Pizzasgood »

And what difference does it make if the text isn't shown? It still takes just as long to boot, but at least this way you can tell what's going on, or at least that it's going on if it's too fast :)

The only problem I can see is if you have epillepsy.

But, hey, if you want it, do it! We aren't stopping you. Just like you aren't stopping me from doing whatever it is I feel like doing, even though it may seem pointless. Seriously, who cares if their computer screams out "Why do they always send the poor?!?!?" when it boots besides me? Nobody, that's who! So instead of asking Barry for a System of a Down Puppy, I make my own. Then I forget that I did that, and it scares my pants of when it boots!

FYI, the above is the eccentric raving of a sleep derived lunatic who ate too many cookies. Don't worry, though. I'll probably pass out in a couple minutes, and when I wake up at 7:00 am, I'll be well rested and ready to start planning Pizzapup! Good nigh........... *CLUNK* Ouch! Good night. *mumble grumble*
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Flash
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#17 Post by Flash »

rarsa wrote:
My complaint exactly!
Why complain? If it is just a few seconds, how does that affect your user experience.
If the boot messages go by too fast to be read, why bother putting them there at all? My choice would be to keep the boot messages and add the ability to step through them. At least then they would be useful for troubleshooting.
Actually, I'm giving up, the effort given to these posts, can be better used in other tasks.
Suit yourself. I agree that there are any number of things that are more important. The boot messages don't bother me. All I ever meant to say was that if they aren't useful then why are they there?

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#18 Post by PaulR »

I know that is SuSe you can elect to see boot text messages or look at some other 'graphic' screen. IMHO Damn Small does a good job of it's boot screen.

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#19 Post by Pizzasgood »

All I ever meant to say was that if they aren't useful then why are they there?
Actually, they can come in usefull. Picture this: Your computer is booting. It wizzes through messages, but then it comes to a screeching halt. Now those messages that were unreadable are there, allowing you to see where you froze at.

Sort of like the milemarkers on the highway. Normally they are useless, but when you crash and burn, you can tell where you're at.
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#20 Post by Flash »

Pizza, that is presently the only use for the boot messages, as far as I can see. Do you think that being able to step through the boot messages one at a time would be a useful capability to add, for troubleshooting purposes?

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#21 Post by rarsa »

Flash, Go ahead. That would be a nice project for you. Implement bootspash in puppy.

I actually like the messages. I am able to see where my pup001 file is, where my usr_cram.fs is, etc.

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#22 Post by Pizzasgood »

http://www.bootsplash.org/

Just in case you didn't already know, and that's all I know. Just one URL. :(

I can see it now....A puppy that steadily grows a bigger afro until Puppy is fully loaded.....
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#23 Post by Guest »

Are we complaining about kernel messages or the output from the boot scripts ?


Or don't we know the difference between the two ?

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Flash
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#24 Post by Flash »

Hell, I don't know, Blade. Is it kernel messages that show on the screen while Puppy boots, or the output of boot scripts, or a combination of the two?

As Pizza pointed out, if the computer hangs during the boot process the last message showing might help to figure out why. The boot screen text whizzes by so fast during a normal boot that I can't see any other reason why it should be there.

Rarsa, I'm NOT saying it bothers me, or that it should be removed. I definitely don't intend to add pretty pictures to the boot screen. I only want to make it serve some purpose, if I can figure one out. :)

My question is, would the ability to step through the boot program add enough troubleshooting utility to be worth the trouble of doing?

I'd be willing to tinker with it just for fun, but I don't have a clue where to start. Does the boot screen show where the program is located that controls the boot process and the messages that are displayed?

Pizza, the bootsplash website looks like it is mainly about eye candy. It doesn't look like it would be much help in modifying the boot program to single-step through it with the "Enter" key, but I admit that I don't know enough to say one way or the other.

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#25 Post by rarsa »

I just got curious and compiled the rhgb.

Now the boot shows only about a screen and a half of very readable text. I'm trying to make it graphical.

Again, this was just curiosity. I don't see it being part of puppy as it requires an xorg X server. I used the new dotPup from MU.

Besides, right now I didn't optimize it for size or anything so it is using reams of HDD. and It requires to add a parameter to the grub kernel command, so people booting from livecd would not be able to use it.

Sorry for making you salivate... I know, I said that I would focus on more important things, but apparently a lot of people finds this important.

If you get to choose: Should I use my time trying to get apt-get and 1000 of slackware compiled applications to install in puppy or to have a nice boot screen, what would you prefer?

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#26 Post by Flash »

Rarsa, that's no choice at all. I'd say don't waste your time making the boot screen look pretty if it won't make the boot messages any more useful.

What is the rhgb?

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#27 Post by rarsa »

flash wrote:What is the rhgb?
Redhat Graphic Boot.

It shows a pretty screen while booting.

The more I see it I'm finding it's not worth it. Puppy loads so fast that the Graphic boot will just flash. Specially because it cannot run before usr_cram.fs is loaded as it needs libraries located there.

By the time usr_cram.fs is loaded, most everything has already been configured

So, to round-up this post and hopefully mark it "solved" I think that you can achieve most of what you want with the following:

- In a HDD installation that uses GRUB, just add the following to the kernel command.
(Only replace what is in bold, as your root will be in a different partition for sure)

kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda11 vga=791 quiet

- In a CD-ROM installation you will have to remaster the cd to start the kernel with those options.

That will show a nice Tux graphic at boot up and will 'quiet' all the kernel messaages. You will still see the init scripts messages.

I played with showing the init script messages conditionally and it worked, although to apply my method to all the messages I would require substantial time and thorough testing.

So, I hope that the 'poor man' solution is good enough for you.

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#28 Post by ozboomer »

babbs wrote:...in case there is a problem and the progress/error is shown, but if it works, why keep showing it if you don't have to?
[...]
Flash wrote:I agree. It would be nice if the boot screen had some practical use. For example, for troubleshooting purposes...
This is why I think we should have something like most of the other distributions do and that is a file like /etc/rc.d/functions, which includes things like displaying text on the console with a bold attribute or by using another colour. As I mentioned elsewhere om the forum, some of the sections in Puppy's sysinit already show the green 'done' text when something's worked Ok... but maybe you do/don't need/want to know about it... I remember a bit of discussion recently about what to do with the 'bad sector' os something -style error being displayed for a disk... and wouldn't you want to know as soon as possible if your disks were on the way out?

Looking at a distribution like PCLinuxOS, they have the 'functions' script so that when some segment is completed in sysinit a message like [ OK ] is displayed on the console. ...or, as some others have described, a 'booting' screen can be displayed right throught the boot until X is started (or all the sysinit messages can be displayed by pressing F2 at the booting screen, a la PCLinuxOS, Morphix, etc).

I think this would be part of the joy of playing with Linux is to borrow ideas from all the distributions... and with Open Source, that is basically encouraged... isn't it!?

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#29 Post by Pizzasgood »

Hell, I don't know, Blade. Is it kernel messages that show on the screen while Puppy boots, or the output of boot scripts, or a combination of the two?
Yep, both. Rarsa's method gets rid of the kernal, and mine should hopefully eliminate the init messages.

But I see now that that's not what you're after. Yes, I do think stepping could be worth doing. I don't think it would slow it down much, the only way to know would be to try it.

If you wanted to set it up to just pause after every step, a simple way would be to go in and add

Code: Select all

read nnnnn
wherever you want to pause in the /etc/rc.d files. However, that would force you to hit enter every time you boot. You could set a variable, then have it check before pausing

Code: Select all

if [ "$PAUSE" = "yes" ];then
read nnnnn
fi
Then you would just have to find a way to set the variable while booting. I guess have it activated by pressing some key. I don't know enough to tell you how, though.

Adding the ability to skip steps would be slightly trickier:

Code: Select all

if [ "$CHECK" = "yes" ];then
echo "I'm going to do something.  Continue? y/n"
read CONTINUE
if [ "$CONTINUE" = "y" ];then
dostuffhere
read nnnnn
fi
else
dostuffhere
fi
I hope that encourages you rather than scares you off :)
Also, that won't do anything about the kernal messages, just the innit scripts.[/code]
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#30 Post by rarsa »

rarsa wrote:I played with showing the init script messages conditionally and it worked,
Pizzas, I also played with the script messages, my approach was different than yours in that at boot time it would ask if the boot should be verbose. The question would have a timeout so you can have an unattended boot.

Code: Select all

echo "Do you want to see boot messages? (y/n)
read -t 5 VERBOSE
I would then replace the echo command for each message with my own function "conditionalecho". That function would conditionally show the echo messages

Code: Select all

conditionalecho()
{
  if [ $VERBOSE = "y" ] ; then
    echo $@
  fi
}
My first thought was a global search and replace. The problem with that is that there are many echos that are meant to populate other variables or to create scripts on the fly, those cannot be changed.

You have to consider also that work needs to be repeated again for the following release.

So, there you have it. I don't feel like replacing all those echos, but someone may find this ideas interesting.

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#31 Post by Flash »

Thanks, Pizza, it looks like you understood exactly what I meant.

Why couldn't it be just another boot-screen option, like the way Windows shows "press F8 for advanced troubleshooting options" when it starts to boot?

Puppy's boot screen might look something like:
In 10 seconds Puppy Linux will load automatically with previously stored settings. (Press "Enter" to skip the wait);

Press 2 to load Puppy Linux without using the hard drive (Puppy will need to be configured);

Press 9 for Puppy Linux to stop after each step of the booting process and wait until you press "Enter" before proceeding to the next step.
Or something like that.

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#32 Post by Pizzasgood »

Well, I don't know if you can do it there easily, but I do know that if you found the init script that launced first, you could have a separate choice then. Also, that way you could side-step having to have a step option for harddrive and for livecd. I'd only give it a five second or less timeout, but I'm not very patient. Maybe it could just say "Press F8 for alternative boot options," then it could give you a menu with any fancy processes you come up with, from no messages to stepping.
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#33 Post by Flash »

It's not just a matter of tinkering around with the isolinux.cfg file?

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#34 Post by Pizzasgood »

I don't know how the isolinux.cfg file is interpreted into the scripts. I haven't looked into it, but my conception has been that it either passes variables to loadlin or the kernal or something, not the actuall scripts. But like I said, I don't know :wink:
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#35 Post by gliezl »

with or without boot message, i still love puppy. :)

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