Seeing all those messages scrolling before your eyes at boot time might be very informative, but it's not beautiful :). If you want a beautiful splash screen like SuSE for example - look no further :).

For this, you'll need the following stuff:
Kernel bootsplash patches: [ftp]ftp://ftp.openbios.org/pub/bootsplash[/ftp]
Solstice's bootsplash utilities package

And some boot splash screens:
Fred Broder's bootsplashes
Kim Moritz Nolde's bootsplashes (not linkable directly; klick on 'Bootsplashes' on the left).

Now let's get down to business, shall we?

Patching & configuring the kernel
You can either download the kernel sources from netpkg, or take the vanilla kernel from kernel.org. Pay attention - if you use reiser4 and take vanilla sources, be sure to apply the reiser4 patch to them. Now, if you got the kernel sources, check this howto for rebuilding your kernel.

Attention: As we speak, the latest available bootsplash patch is for the 2.6.15 kernel. However, you can perfectly use it on 2.6.16, with a little tweaking. Just change to the dir where the patch is in, and proceed like this:


After that, you can apply the patch to the 2.6.16 sources, just like described in the kernel howto. For convenience, you can do a 'make oldconfig'. This is not indispensable, but it's quite convenient, as it will only ask you about the options yet to be configured (i.e. the ones the patch added). After that, run a 'make gconfig' to configure graphically.
Then check for the kernel config to look exactly like this:


If that matches, you're set. We need initial RAM disk support also in the kernel, but that's enabled in the default Zenwalk kernel configuration - so save & exit. Now build your kernel. Don't be lazy, you can do other stuff when your kernel is building :P. So get your ass back up in here, and start with the second part!

Installing & configuring your actual bootsplash
Install the bootsplash tgz you downloaded before. It contains the utilities needed to build a bootsplash. First, you need to install the themes though. Check if /etc/bootsplash/themes exists, if not, create it:

Then extract the bootsplash themes to that dir:


After that, you have to decide what theme you'll use. Then, you have to install it as your bootsplash:

That will create the initial RAM disk.

Now we'll edit the startup & shutdown scripts to match. First, add the following to /etc/rc.d/rc.local:


Then we modify /etc/rc.d/rc.M and /etc/rc.d/rc.6. At the top of rc.M, we add this as first command:


At the top of rc.6, we put this:


Preparing lilo for the new kernel and bootsplash
At the top of /etc/lilo.conf, you add the following:


In the linux bootable partition section, add a new entry for your kernel. You can use an entry similar to the default one; however, you need to add this one line to the new entry:


Your entry should look like this:


That's it - you're good to go now. Just run lilo:

and enjoy the beauty of the splash screen . Have fun!

For verbose, you'll probably just have to change

append = "splash=silent"

to

append = "splash=verbose"

right?

Yes, or press F2 during booting .

My favorite from "gone with the wind" forum.
Thank you for revitalising it (I guess there is word like "revitalize" in English), anyone has "changing you root patition" or can rewrite it?

Regards
Michal

i'd say "resurrecting" myself. ^_^

hey, is this howto "compatible" with zenwalk 2.2?


thanx,

duke

Duke... What do you think?

I think it's a "yes"....Gonna give it a try this week
thanx,
duke.

I got the first bootsplash from here and only followed these lines:



since the kernel is already bootsplash enabled. I get no errors, but the bootsplash is still the default zenwalk blue one.

This doesn't make sense, since my lilo.conf has the initrd set to /boot/initrd.splash. I don't see what else needs to be done.

Did you have old /boot/initrd.splash file before you entered splash -s -f /etc/bootsplash/themes/[insert your choice]/config/bootsplash-1024x768.cfg >> /boot/initrd.splash? If you did, try to give it another name and then reenter the command and rewrite lilo.

Did you run lilo after creating your new RAM disk?

You need to run lilo after editing the lilo.conf for changes to be updated.

I did Fox's solution and it worked. I moved the old initrd.splash to initrd.splash.old. Then I did all the stuff again.

I like a minimal lilo prompt so I add to lilo.conf

install=text
message=/boot/boot_message.txt

I then edit my /boot/boot_message.txt to read

Win or Zen?

with one blank line below

I also rem out the following lines

# bitmap=/boot/splash.bmp
# bmp-table=234p,348p,1,4
# bmp-colors=220,0,,255,220,
# bmp-timer=539p,396p,220,0,

and the run lilo

My prompt then looks like this ;

LILO 22.7.3
Win or Zen?
Boot:

Pretty Zen I reckon and of course there is more than one way to answer this

Thanks for the tutorial and the help on IRC Borromini, you're right: creating my own initrd WAS easy