Plymouth or other Splash Screen Alternatives

BigBrownHawk · 2016-03-17 15:56:12

Hi,

Has anyone here gotten a splash screen to work with bunsenlabs or crunchbang? I've checked out the old crunchbang forum. There have been attempts at getting plymouth to work correctly. The behavior I've heard and also experienced was not being able to poweroff correctly. It'll hang up on a black screen with out powering down my VM.

I enjoy the minimal look for bootups myself but, I have to package my machine off to a business and would love to have something that looks clean and professional.

Thanks,
BBH

ohnonot · 2016-03-17 19:03:49

i did it on crunchbang.
it's a machine i since updated to bunsenlabs, and plymouth is still half working (i never bothered, but it looks fixable).
i aonly got the bootup ani working, not shutdown.
have a look for related threads with my username in it on #! forums.

Head_on_a_Stick · 2016-03-17 20:28:12

I got Plymouth working in a vanilla Debian jessie system without too much trouble so it should work in BL as well.

Try https://wiki.debian.org/plymouth

BigBrownHawk · 2016-03-17 21:19:40

I recall crunchbang version 9 had a working splash screen. Wasn't sure if it was Plymouth. Makes me wonder why it was taken out by the time version 11 came about.

damo · 2016-03-17 21:29:00

BigBrownHawk wrote:

I recall crunchbang version 9 had a working splash screen. Wasn't sure if it was Plymouth. Makes me wonder why it was taken out by the time version 11 came about.

Bloat?

IIRC it was Plymouth + gdm then

el_koraco · 2016-03-17 21:38:12

You can get Playmouth working, but having a smooth splash screen from bootloader to login is sufficiently non-trivial and error prone that most distros don't bother. Which I totally support!

pvsage · 2016-03-17 23:22:01

el_koraco wrote:

sufficiently non-trivial and error prone that most distros don't bother!

...which makes me wonder why Debian bothers with it on their Live ISOs, especially since the installed system doesn't have a boot splash.

hhh · 2016-03-18 00:51:16

The Wiki instuctions WFM, but Plymouth has a bug with my Intel driver that causes black dead pixels to appear during the animation.

Eff it, boot time is slightly faster without Plymouth and only marginally less attractive.

ohnonot · 2016-03-18 06:01:29

BigBrownHawk wrote:

I recall crunchbang version 9 had a working splash screen. Wasn't sure if it was Plymouth. Makes me wonder why it was taken out by the time version 11 came about.

cause it wasn't based on ubuntu anymore.
cause it's useless.
and, it also makes it somewhat difficult to read error messages and warnings during boot (obviously).
i once read an article somewhere that said that plymouth even discards error messages, and should therefore be regarded faulty and dangerous, or sth to that effect.

with all that said, i understand your need for it.
i did it for similar reasons.

btw, i don't think there's an alternative to plymouth.
splash screen on linux == plymouth.

el_koraco · 2016-03-18 07:22:10

pvsage wrote:

...which makes me wonder why Debian bothers with it on their Live ISOs, especially since the installed system doesn't have a boot splash.

A live ISO is easy, you configure open source drivers and one or two display managers and you're done. The variety increases exponentially once you get to installed systems.

BigBrownHawk · 2016-03-18 19:04:41

I figured out how to manually shutdown the VM once I launch the poweroff command...

1) Send poweroff command
2) Your screen will now look like this with a black screen

3) press ctrl + alt + f1 on the black screen to get to tty1 this allows the computer to fully shutdown instead of stalling.

Now how would I automate this? Send a poweroff through tty1?

Last edited by BigBrownHawk (2016-03-18 19:06:51)

xaos52 · 2016-03-18 19:48:56

How do you start the VM? Using VirtualBox or something else?
Bunsenlabs running as host or as guest?
Is the guest started automatically when booting the host? How?
How do you 'send poweroff'?

BigBrownHawk · 2016-03-18 20:10:39

xaos52 wrote:

How do you start the VM? Using VirtualBox or something else?
Bunsenlabs running as host or as guest?
Is the guest started automatically when booting the host? How?
How do you 'send poweroff'?

How I start my VM is by using VirtualBox v5.0.14.
I'm actually running a stripped down version of crunchbang waldorf.
Tint2 is disabled, conky is disabled, anything that isn't truly necessary is disabled.

The purpose of this VM is to build a sandboxed app designed specifically for one program.

I shutdown simply speaking by sending

sudo poweroff

once my script sees the program has been terminated.

It'll shutdown smoothly until I install Plymouth.

And heads up when you set up Plymouth:
Virtualbox likes the ATI settings when editing the modules file.

Last edited by BigBrownHawk (2016-03-18 20:16:43)

xaos52 · 2016-03-18 20:26:54

Thanks for explaining.
I understand now what the problem is.
This would require debugging plymouth to see where exactly it stalls, or falls back to a terminal prompt, which I am not really interested in.
When you enter 'exit' on the prompt, does it then run to termination? Or don't you get control and can't you enter anything?

BigBrownHawk · 2016-03-18 21:06:52

xaos52 wrote:

Thanks for explaining.
I understand now what the problem is.
This would require debugging plymouth to see where exactly it stalls, or falls back to a terminal prompt, which I am not really interested in.
When you enter 'exit' on the prompt, does it then run to termination? Or don't you get control and can't you enter anything?

I can type exit into the prompt when I press enter nothing happens.

Maybe there is a command that will send poweroff to tty1 from openbox?

ttyecho?

Last edited by BigBrownHawk (2016-03-18 21:20:08)

xaos52 · 2016-03-18 21:17:47

Well, I was curious, and I am always working on a throw-away system, so I installed plymouth and I can see it is active during boot, but I can't see it stepping in at shutdown. Perhaps because my system shuts down real fast?
This is on bare metal, not in a VM.
The shutdown does not stall, but is really fast.

I installed plymouth-theme and desktop-base together with plymouth-thems and plymouth.
Just changed /etc/default-grub to

# If you change this file, run 'update-grub' afterwards to update
# /boot/grub/grub.cfg.
# For full documentation of the options in this file, see:
#   info -f grub -n 'Simple configuration'

GRUB_DEFAULT=0
GRUB_TIMEOUT=5
GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR=`lsb_release -i -s 2> /dev/null || echo Debian`
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="initrd=/install/gtk/initrd.gz"

# Uncomment to enable BadRAM filtering, modify to suit your needs
# This works with Linux (no patch required) and with any kernel that obtains
# the memory map information from GRUB (GNU Mach, kernel of FreeBSD ...)
#GRUB_BADRAM="0x01234567,0xfefefefe,0x89abcdef,0xefefefef"

# Uncomment to disable graphical terminal (grub-pc only)
#GRUB_TERMINAL=console

# The resolution used on graphical terminal
# note that you can use only modes which your graphic card supports via VBE
# you can see them in real GRUB with the command `vbeinfo'
GRUB_GFXMODE=1920x1080x32

# Uncomment if you don't want GRUB to pass "root=UUID=xxx" parameter to Linux
#GRUB_DISABLE_LINUX_UUID=true

# Uncomment to disable generation of recovery mode menu entries
#GRUB_DISABLE_RECOVERY="true"

# Uncomment to get a beep at grub start
#GRUB_INIT_TUNE="480 440 1"

just added 'splash' to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT
and changed GRUB_GFXMODE
then ran

sudo update-grub

So, seems like plymouth 'just works' with bunsenlabs.

I will try it in a VM tomorrow, and let you know how I fare.

BigBrownHawk · 2016-03-18 21:27:08

xaos52 wrote:

Well, I was curious, and I am always working on a throw-away system, so I installed plymouth and I can see it is active during boot, but I can't see it stepping in at shutdown. Perhaps because my system shuts down real fast?
This is on bare metal, not in a VM.
The shutdown does not stall, but is really fast.
I installed plymouth-theme and desktop-base together with plymouth-thems and plymouth.
Just changed /etc/default-grub to
# If you change this file, run 'update-grub' afterwards to update
# /boot/grub/grub.cfg.
# For full documentation of the options in this file, see:
#   info -f grub -n 'Simple configuration'

GRUB_DEFAULT=0
GRUB_TIMEOUT=5
GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR=`lsb_release -i -s 2> /dev/null || echo Debian`
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="initrd=/install/gtk/initrd.gz"

# Uncomment to enable BadRAM filtering, modify to suit your needs
# This works with Linux (no patch required) and with any kernel that obtains
# the memory map information from GRUB (GNU Mach, kernel of FreeBSD ...)
#GRUB_BADRAM="0x01234567,0xfefefefe,0x89abcdef,0xefefefef"

# Uncomment to disable graphical terminal (grub-pc only)
#GRUB_TERMINAL=console

# The resolution used on graphical terminal
# note that you can use only modes which your graphic card supports via VBE
# you can see them in real GRUB with the command `vbeinfo'
GRUB_GFXMODE=1920x1080x32

# Uncomment if you don't want GRUB to pass "root=UUID=xxx" parameter to Linux
#GRUB_DISABLE_LINUX_UUID=true

# Uncomment to disable generation of recovery mode menu entries
#GRUB_DISABLE_RECOVERY="true"

# Uncomment to get a beep at grub start
#GRUB_INIT_TUNE="480 440 1"
just added 'splash' to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT
and changed GRUB_GFXMODE
then ran
sudo update-grub
So, seems like plymouth 'just works' with bunsenlabs.
I will try it in a VM tomorrow, and let you know how I fare.

Appreciate the collaboration here.

I found an interesting post on stack exchange about ttyecho. In case you end up with the same issues I've ran into. Might be an interesting work around by sending the poweroff command to tty1.

http://askubuntu.com/questions/194293/h … y-terminal

I'm taking a break for the day.
Have a good weekend guys!

ohnonot · 2016-03-19 05:19:57

BigBrownHawk, did you find my old posts/threads regarding this on #! forums?
what you're talking there faintly rings a bell, i think i had similar problems.

but if, according to the good doctor, plymouth works better on debian 8, why don't you go with bunsenlabs?

also, i suspect plymouth will behave differentl on a bare metal install than on a vm.

xaos52 · 2016-03-19 12:53:17

@OP:
How do you start 'the script' you were talking about?
If you start it from an xterm, try using Alt+F2 instead. See if that works.

Installed plymouth in Bunsenlabs VM.
Just works.

hhh · 2016-03-20 00:28:49

Played with Plymouth again on Hydrogen last night. Full on meh. So not worth the effort for what it does (hides a few seconds of rather important boot stages). And then it kicks you back to the console right before login anyways. systemd boot times FTW.

#1 2016-03-17 15:56:12

Plymouth or other Splash Screen Alternatives

#2 2016-03-17 19:03:49

Re: Plymouth or other Splash Screen Alternatives

#3 2016-03-17 20:28:12

Re: Plymouth or other Splash Screen Alternatives

#4 2016-03-17 21:19:40

Re: Plymouth or other Splash Screen Alternatives

#5 2016-03-17 21:29:00

Re: Plymouth or other Splash Screen Alternatives

#6 2016-03-17 21:38:12

Re: Plymouth or other Splash Screen Alternatives

#7 2016-03-17 23:22:01

Re: Plymouth or other Splash Screen Alternatives

#8 2016-03-18 00:51:16

Re: Plymouth or other Splash Screen Alternatives

#9 2016-03-18 06:01:29

Re: Plymouth or other Splash Screen Alternatives

#10 2016-03-18 07:22:10

Re: Plymouth or other Splash Screen Alternatives

#11 2016-03-18 19:04:41

Re: Plymouth or other Splash Screen Alternatives

#12 2016-03-18 19:48:56

Re: Plymouth or other Splash Screen Alternatives

#13 2016-03-18 20:10:39

Re: Plymouth or other Splash Screen Alternatives

#14 2016-03-18 20:26:54

Re: Plymouth or other Splash Screen Alternatives

#15 2016-03-18 21:06:52

Re: Plymouth or other Splash Screen Alternatives

#16 2016-03-18 21:17:47

Re: Plymouth or other Splash Screen Alternatives

#17 2016-03-18 21:27:08

Re: Plymouth or other Splash Screen Alternatives

#18 2016-03-19 05:19:57

Re: Plymouth or other Splash Screen Alternatives

#19 2016-03-19 12:53:17

Re: Plymouth or other Splash Screen Alternatives

#20 2016-03-20 00:28:49

Re: Plymouth or other Splash Screen Alternatives

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