limit output during boot process

tOsYZYny · Monday at 7:19 PM

When the system boots up, it prints out a ton of information to the screen prior to actually making consoles available for the user to login.

Is it possible to completely hide all of that output unless there is an interactive prompt?

There is a ton of information there and there is no way I will be able to read fast enough to digest it. I can later see these messages via dmesg, right, so it is 'noise' to me.

Kai Burghardt · Monday at 7:26 PM

The keyword you are looking for is “splash(4)”/“splash screen”: E. g. Thread 88653.

BaronBS · Monday at 7:30 PM

Code:

beastie@BattleStar-Lat54 --> ~
Ψ head -13 /boot/loader.conf | tail -5                                                                                                                                         < 20:29 >  < 11,725-01-06 >  < 0 > 
# Boot
boot_mute="YES"
autoboot_delay="5"
#vesa_load="YES"
kern.vty="vt"
beastie@BattleStar-Lat54 --> ~
Ψ grep -n -E '(1|2)> /dev/null' /etc/rc.d/* | grep -E 'routing|netif|ldconfig'                                                                                                 < 20:29 >  < 11,725-01-06 >  < 0 > 
/etc/rc.d/ldconfig:39:          startmsg 'ELF ldconfig path:' ${_LDC} 1> /dev/null
/etc/rc.d/ldconfig:64:                  startmsg '32-bit compatibility ldconfig path:' ${_LDC} 1> /dev/null
/etc/rc.d/netif:259:                            /sbin/ifconfig ${ifn} 1> /dev/null 2> /dev/null
/etc/rc.d/routing:69:                   eval static_${_a} delete $_if 1> /dev/null 2> /dev/null
/etc/rc.d/routing:96:           static_$2 add $3 1> /dev/null 2> /dev/null
/etc/rc.d/routing:103:          static_$2 add $3 1> /dev/null 2> /dev/null
beastie@BattleStar-Lat54 --> ~
Ψ                                                                                                                                                                              < 20:30 >  < 11,725-01-06 >  < 0 >

tOsYZYny · Monday at 8:27 PM

Nice, where is the documentation for boot_mute? That is a start, I think I need to go through the services now to mute those too.

Yes, a "splash screen" would be nice, but honestly, I'd be fine with a black screen to keep it minimal as possible.

12.3. Configuring Boot Time Splash Screens

tOsYZYny · Monday at 8:48 PM

I took the FreeBSD logo, downsized it to 320px wide, and then set the mode to indexed and exported it to bitmap, but I'm not seeing that on boot:

splash_bmp_load="YES"
bitmap_load="YES"
bitmap_name="/boot/FreeBSD-256.bmp"

The property, boot_mute, works and that logo is sufficient for my purposes, but it'd be nice to quiet the rest of the services' output.

I think it isn't supported yet ... with vt, sc is, but that is deprecated:

Solved Thread 'Change Bootloader splash screen'

May 4, 2020

Hi! I'm trying to change the bootloader splash screen. My OS is FreeBSD-11.3

So, I've tried this according to https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/boot-splash.html

In /boot/loader.conf:

Code:

splash_bmp_load="YES"
bitmap_load="YES"
bitmap_name="/boot/fulgerbsd.bmp"
boot_mute="YES"
beastie_disable="YES"
hw.vga.textmode=0

In /boot/defaults/loader.conf:

Code:

[...]
###  Splash screen configuration  ############################
splash_bmp_load="YES"           # Set this to YES for bmp splash screen!
splash_pcx_load="NO"            # Set this to YES for...

T-Daemon · Tuesday at 4:11 PM

tOsYZYny said:
I took the FreeBSD logo, downsized it to 320px wide, and then set the mode to indexed and exported it to bitmap, but I'm not seeing that on boot:

tOsYZYny said:
The property, boot_mute, works and that logo is sufficient for my purposes, but it'd be nice to quiet the rest of the services' output.

Bitmaps don't work in vt(4) but .png of certain size. Here beastie.png '240x260' px ( beastie source, resized) :

/boot/loader.conf

Code:

splash="/boot/images/beastie.png"
boot_mute="YES"

For black screen create a black.png.

tOsYZYny said:
... but it'd be nice to quiet the rest of the services' output.

I think it isn't supported yet ... with vt

That's correct, it's not supported. I'm not aware of a planed support.

tOsYZYny · Tuesday at 4:42 PM

Oh ok, so, it basically allows me to replace the logo with whatever I want, it still runs for the same duration. What are the limits on the png size? I did 320x240.

I remember the good ole days hacking Need For Speed with custom bitmaps.

T-Daemon · 2025-01-08T09:17:21+0000

tOsYZYny said:
What are the limits on the png size?

After some tests, the maximum size seems to be limited to the screen resolution of the efi framebuffer.

For example:

Code:

 # dmesg | grep 'VT('
VT(efifb): resolution 1920x1080

If the image is larger, it will not be downsized; in this case, the screen will turn black.

I tested some from a collection of JPG wallpapers, using graphics/gimp, scaled down/up or used as is if the size matched, exported to “.png”, pixel format 8bpc RGBA.

16bpc RGBA, or RGB color model are apparently not supported.

Andriy · 2025-01-08T16:04:20+0000

tOsYZYny said:
There is a ton of information there and there is no way I will be able to read fast enough to digest it. I can later see these messages via dmesg, right, so it is 'noise' to me.

It's just noise until you need it. E.g., if your boot gets stuck...
So, if you are able to tolerate a few seconds of "noise", why bother suppressing it.
Just my personal opinion, of course.