How To Enable Graphical Boot with Plymouth in Fedora 10

[SendDerek]

This is my humble tutorial on how to get the graphical boot in Fedora 10 better known as Plymouth. I believe that by default on video cards other than ATI, this feature is disabled (somebody may need to correct me on that).

Here is a video demo of what I'm referring to:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G27F2hBbTTs

Here is the tutorial on how to get it working:
http://www.derekhildreth.com/blog/ho...th-fedora-tip/

[SendDerek]

Updated: November 28th, 2008

Thanks to this guide, I was able to get rid of the simple blue/light blue/white bar loader and get the fancy graphical loader better known as Plymouth. Keep in mind that I am using it on a laptop that has Intel 945GM graphics and it's the only thing I have tested this on.

I’m going to keep things basic without a lot of jargon. If you’d like more details on this, visit this page.

Type the following into the terminal to configure grub:

su -
gedit /boot/grub/grub.conf

Then, within the grub.conf file, add the bold text below (this value will also depend upon which screen resolution you’d like. To get this value, visit this page):

title Fedora (2.6.27.5-117.fc10.i686)
root (hd0,9)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27.5-117.fc10.i686 ro root=UUID=a61c8338-e373-4389-ae00-32942185f7c2 rhgb quiet vga=792
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.27.5-117.fc10.i686.img

If you’d like to add more themes, you’ll need to first download and install them and then set them as default. To do this, type the following into the terminal, replacing what’s within the {} with the theme of your choice):

su -
yum install plymouth-plugin-{fade-in,pulser,spinfinity}

Then, set your theme as default:

su -
plymouth-set-default-plugin pluginname
/usr/libexec/plymouth/plymouth-update-initrd

[justdo]

After I add "vga=xxx" on the gurb.conf , it work perfectly after reboot.
here is table for the value of the vga mode(which is typed as XXX in ""vga=xxx"
Colours 640x480 800x600 1024x768 1280x1024 1600x1200
-------- + ---------------------------------------------
256 | 769 771 773 775 796
32,768 | 784 787 790 793 797
65,536 | 785 788 791 794 798
16.8M | 786 789 792 795 799

[TheIcebreaker]

Any idea of the value to use for 1440 900 resolution.

[Noblacktie]

Thanks! I was wondering if the tricolour bar was what this fancy 'Plymouth' thingy was supposed to be.

On another note, Fedora takes about 20 seconds longer to go from GRUB to desktop than it did Ubuntu. Is there an issue with my installation or does 'Plymouth' not work in all cases?

[keenanparm]

Holy crap, I thought the color bar was supposed to be Plymouth in all its glory as well. I just installed Fedora 10 again a few days ago, I ran this fix last night....and it's freaking beautiful!

No wonder people were going nuts over how great Plymouth was/is when F10 was released.

Many thanks to the OP on this one.

[NightSinner]

Hello, Brothers in OS. I´ve been using Fedora since Fedora 8 was released and I´ḿ glad I made that decision. I have a small problem. When I enabled plymouth following this guide everything went ok. That is until it finishes booting. Then it freezes like another very famous OS Pressing the Esc doesn´t help. Nothing happens. The funny thing is when I press the Esc button everything goes ok and boots just fine and get the GDM. Can anyone give me a solution to this problem? My graphics card is Nvidia Geforce FX 5200.

Best Regards,
NightSinner

[my_linux]

Try vga=ask this should scan modes available for your computer and list them.

[Trombre]

FANTASTIC!! Thank you, I was wondering about the "less is more" tricolor line. This worked very well.

[DiscreetControl]

same problem as nightsinner...
solar locks
pulse locks
spinfinity locks
fade-in boots
text(tri-color bar @ bottom) boots
press escape as soon as splash starts and it boots on any above(same as removing quiet from grub.conf)

Fedora 10
graphics card: Nvidia GeForce MX440 (kmod-nvidia-96xx)
grub.conf vga set to "vga=792"

also once the desktop loads if i switch to a terminal ctrl+alt+f2-f6 if i switch back to ctrl+alt+f1 i get a black screen, if i ctrl+alt+f7 sometimes it loads but cant switch workspaces and any open apps lock in place and other times i get black screen with a cursor... any suggestions?

[rootbinbash]

amazing guys,works like a charm, thanks

[mrHappyPants]

hey guys, i've done a bit of shopping around but haven't really found an answer to my question so was wondering if anyone was able to help me.

Is it possible to use 1680x1050x32 in plymouth by default? I used vga=ask and was presented with a list of numbers/letters, their corresponding resolutions and their mode (vesa/vga) and I'm able to select 1680x1050x32 by inputting either "z" or "369" but when I try "vga=369" in my menu.lst it doesn't work, it gives me the same options I saw with vga=ask.

Any help would be appreciated, even if its "personal experience says no" kind of things.

Thanks in advance

[Onebyte]

hey guys, i've done a bit of shopping around but haven't really found an answer to my question so was wondering if anyone was able to help me.

Is it possible to use 1680x1050x32 in plymouth by default? I used vga=ask and was presented with a list of numbers/letters, their corresponding resolutions and their mode (vesa/vga) and I'm able to select 1680x1050x32 by inputting either "z" or "369" but when I try "vga=369" in my menu.lst it doesn't work, it gives me the same options I saw with vga=ask.

Any help would be appreciated, even if its "personal experience says no" kind of things.

Thanks in advance

Hi, The reason using "vga=369" doesn't work is because although the Linux kernel allows user configuration of VESA modes at boot time using the 'vga' kernel parameter. This parameter does not directly accept VESA video mode numbers; instead, a Linux video mode number must be calculated using the VESA number.

To calculate the Linux video mode number add 512. The resulting decimal value can be passed to the kernel in the form 'vga=XXX', where XXX is the value. This calculation is not always accurate. It is a good starting point and you may have to do some experimenting to find the correct value.

The Linux video mode number you need to enable graphical boot with Plymouth using 1680x1050x32 is "vga=873", this converts to VESA mode "369".

Hope this helps, Onebyte.

[mrHappyPants]

Hi, The reason using "vga=369" doesn't work is because although the Linux kernel allows user configuration of VESA modes at boot time using the 'vga' kernel parameter. This parameter does not directly accept VESA video mode numbers; instead, a Linux video mode number must be calculated using the VESA number.

To calculate the Linux video mode number add 512. The resulting decimal value can be passed to the kernel in the form 'vga=XXX', where XXX is the value. This calculation is not always accurate. It is a good starting point and you may have to do some experimenting to find the correct value.

The Linux video mode number you need to enable graphical boot with Plymouth using 1680x1050x32 is "vga=873", this converts to VESA mode "369".

Hope this helps, Onebyte.

Thank you Onebyte, worked a charm

[Gaurav Prabhu]

Worked for me too, but feels a bit laggy to me