Hide console messages while Plymouth is running

Thank you for taking the time to report this issue and help to improve Ubuntu.

What is the exact text that appears on your screen before plymouth starts? There should never be any text from fsck; plymouth is started from the root filesystem before mountall is started, and mountall drives all the fsck handling at boot.

plymouth will not be added back to the initramfs by default because it is not needed there and it slows down the boot overall. Anything that results in text output prior to plymouth starting when the 'quiet' boot option is used is buggy, and those components should be fixed.

Doh.. I obviously didn't put enough detail in my report to be spared the noob-"Thank you for taking the time to report...."
(Must do better next time!)

I'll attach a video of the boot with FRAMEBUFFER=n

It is a little slow for some reason, perhaps some reprofiling going on as I only just updated the initramfs right before the reboot.

On Tue, 2010-03-09 at 21:36 +0000, Steve Langasek wrote:

> What is the exact text that appears on your screen before plymouth
> starts? There should never be any text from fsck; plymouth is started
> from the root filesystem before mountall is started, and mountall drives
> all the fsck handling at boot.
>
Actually, while plymouth is started relatively early, the splash screen
isn't shown - so there's a brief period where console messages can get
through.

I haven't yet removed "console output" from mountall, so an fsck or two
can sneak through while the graphics driver is loading.

That being said, plymouth should have captured that and hid it in
boot.log - but it doesn't, so this is a plymouth "bug"

 status triaged

Scott
--
Scott James Remnant
<email address hidden>

Admittedly, the shutdown screen-grabs are completely worthless quality.

Here is the boot messages before plymouth comes up transcribed:

fsck from util-linux-ng 2.17
fsck from util-linux-ng 2.17
udevd[419]: can not read /lib/udev/rules.d/69-xorg-vmmouse.rules <-- (This is a zero length file, looks like I had a corrupt ext4 filesys)

WARNING: All config files need .conf: /etc/modprobe.d/.......
Ignored in a future release.
WARNING: All config files need .conf: /etc/modprobe.d/.......
Ignored in a future release.
WARNING: All config files need .conf: /etc/modprobe.d/.......
Ignored in a future release.
WARNING: All config files need .conf: /etc/modprobe.d/.......
Ignored in a future release.

  status triaged

Scott
--
Scott James Remnant
<email address hidden>

(Oops, sorry for changing the status back... it showed "incomplete" before I changed it, looks like we had a mid-air clash which Launchpad resolved by applying the changes consecutively.)

I have the same problem (though the blank screen period is a bit shorter on my computer).

I get an fsck message for two partitions and a couple of lines about a dodgy webcam driver. Then Plymouth loads. I don't get console messages overlaid onto the splash screen, but they're there before it appears.

In addition, I get strange TERM and "disconnected from system bus" messages on shutdown (plymouth closes a few seconds before the computer switches off).

Its good to know that you're aware of the issue already. One final thing - I don't seem to even have a boot.log. I upgraded from Intrepid -> Jaunty -> Karmic -> Lucid, and I'm missing a ton of log files. This isn't exactly the same bug, but I thought I'd mention it in case it is related to them not being piped to a log file.

Is it normal that plymouth is started after so long? I thought it was possible to launch it immediately after grub.

I am also effected, a very small splash screen of about 1/2 sec while the rest is blinking cursor and something about a faulty mmc controller.

I should of added that the cursor comes first then a small bit of plymouth splash and then GDM loads.

Is it only caused by console messages?

Yes, I have the same problem on all my systems but there is an easy workaround.

Afaik the problem is that the initramfs scripts only put Plymouth and obviously kms in the initrd if cryptsetup is installed to ask for the password with a proper screen. So if you install cryptsetup everything looks great and professional and kms is run directly after grub.

If it isn't installed you first get the standard resolution, some flickering and often some fsck messages before KMS and Plymouth start. I think that they do it because of the boot startup time but I personally would have no problem to loose 2 seconds or something like that if it looks more professional.

Atm the boot experience doesn't look so well so I would put Plymouth (and KMS) in initrd all the time. With it the boot looks like on MacOsX or something like that.

Wow that's amazing it works. Hopefully this will help fix the issue natively.

You can enable this without installing cryptsetup by:

  echo FRAMEBUFFER=y > /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/splash
  update-initramfs -u

The longer-term plan I think, if it works, is to try and early-load udev and the graphics drivers if we can get away with it - so there isn't the black screen gap

I don't have a file for splash. Only resume.

owen.c: you would have had a file for splash if you ran those commands ;-)

I get permission denied error.

I try
sudo echo FRAMEBUFFER-y > sudo /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/splash
sudo update-initramfs -u

But still no file created. Is this the correct way to do it?

Sorry I'm very new.

echo FRAMEBUFFER=y | sudo tee /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/splash

echo FRAMEBUFFER=y | sudo tee /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/splash

Thanks guys. Works perfectly. Now can this be fixed in the next version do you reckon?

I did a few tests with Lucid beta running on VMWare. The videos of the startup sequence are attached. Please play them in vlc, mplayer plays them way to fast. In each case you can disregard the green screen and the VMWare logo. They seems to be specific to VMWare.

Test 1. The splash file as described in #18 is present, the system performs an fsck: Ugly message all over the place, the message about the disk check is flickering, no indication about the progress as we used to have.

Test 2. The splash file as described in #18 is not present, the system performs an fsck: Again, the messages are flickering. On a physical machine it's less apparent, but still noticeable.

Test 3. The splash file as described in #18 is not present, the system has an encrypted disc and has to ask for a password: Messages all over the place.

I'm not impressed by plymouth. The old usplash was much tidier since you could specify a box in which all the messages were displayed.

Well that's not unhidden text. It's meant to be checking for errors.

This bug is about the splash starting late where as yours starts immediately. But performs a disk check.

echo FRAMEBUFFER=y | sudo tee /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/splash

This worked for me too. Although Plymouth would not start at all before.

Plymouth worked fine in fedora.

oh and I gota say boot is Fast>>>

Very Happy now :)

This bug was fixed in the package plymouth - 0.8.1-1

---------------
plymouth (0.8.1-1) lucid; urgency=low

  [ Scott James Remnant ]
  * Update to the upstream 0.8.1 release:
    - Our patches have been merged upstream, some changes due to cleaning
      them up for submission and noticing a few bugs along the way.
      Remaining changes are:
      + ubuntu-logo theme
      + ubuntu version of the text theme
      + call update-initramfs rather than plymouth-update-initrd in
        plymouth-set-default-theme
      + filter fsck progress updates from the progress bar tracker
      + watch for enter key press
      + support lbm-nouveau as an alternate driver name for nouveau to
        permit backports once Lucid has released
      + use /dev/fb0 as default framebuffer device name
      + stop animation of script plugin in idle function
    - Will become process group leader of its VT if possible (opens without
      O_NOCTTY when redirecting stdio to it), this is almost certainly
      correct keyboard-wise.
    - Deallocates VT on "plymouth quit" after switching VT back to VT1
    - Open terminal in text and details plugin, don't assume it's already
      open.
    - Calling "plymouth quit" or "plymouth deactivate" while the same
      command is already running will now block the new command until the
      old one complete, rather than returning immediately.
    - Various window fixes for script plugin
    - Script plugin updated to use the window X and Y offsets every time
    - Plymouth client tool has been updated to have commands for many cases
      in preference to the --command style.

  * Restored code to disable Plymouth's graphical plugins when an alternate
    init= is given on the kernel command-line, otherwise init=/bin/bash
    doesn't work so well when Plymouth is in the initramfs.
  * Restored crash handler that dumps boot messages to /dev/tty1.

  * Split themes out into different packages, reducing the size of the
    Plymouth package. This also means that you can remove the themes
    packages to remove the "graphical splash" part of Plymouth while keeping
    the ability to prompt for questions on the console.
  * Use the alternatives system to select the default themes. The existing
    symlink will be replaced on upgrade if you have not changed it.
  * Also use alternatives to select the text theme.
  * Restore the upstream text theme, renaming ours to "ubuntu-text".
  * Fallback to the built-in details theme (boot messages on console, but
    with the ability to prompt for questions) if no theme package is
    installed.
  (LP: #507238)

    Unfortunately these changes mean that if you've selected a custom
    theme, you will need to install that package and select it again.
    Sorry about that.

  * Include the 16-color VGA frame-buffer renderer. LP: #526892.

  * Fix text, ubuntu-text and details themes to restore the console to text
    mode when adding text displays.

  * debian/rules:
    - Set default tty for boot and shutdown with configure arguments
    - Set default background color to the Ubuntu Aubergine, this provides
      some consistency with other default themes.
  * debian/plymouth.upstart, d...

After upgrading to plymouth 0.8.1-1, the situation is even worse: now I can't see the "Ubuntu 10.04" label nor the "for dots" colored progress bar during boot. I only see a black screen during computer startup with three informational and error messages, until GDM starts.

Shutting down and restarting the computer does effectively shows a white graphical Ubuntu logo (with a rather ugly color degradation, by the way, but that's another story...)

cat /proc/fb
0 inteldrmfb
1 VGA16 VGA
i.e. INTEL 855GM

Now seems worse for me as well - I removed the FRAMEBUFFER=y from /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/splash and did a sudo update-initramfs -u
I then updated to the latest plymouth using update-manager.
On reboot I saw the usual fsck messages, blinking cursor before GDM was displayed.
On subsequent reboot, I saw lots of blinking cursor, then very late I saw a short plymouth theme before GDM.
On subsequent reboot I saw the "mountall could not connect to plymouth" message, blinking cursor, short plymouth then GDM

On attempting to readd FRAMEBUFFER=y and doing a sudo update-initramfs -u I got the following errors:
dad@ubuntu-laptop:~$ sudo update-initramfs -u
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-17-generic
/usr/share/initramfs-tools/hooks/plymouth: 39: /usr/sbin/plymouth-set-default-theme: not found
cp: cannot stat `/lib/plymouth/themes/text': No such file or directory
grep: /lib/plymouth/themes//.plymouth: No such file or directory

Seems like the updates has deleted the /usr/sbin/plymouth-set-default-theme command!

Ricardo,

Please file a separate bug report for the problem you still see with 0.8.1-1. (BTW, the "ugliness" of the logo on shutdown just means that you're using the VGA16 framebuffer driver because there's no better kernel driver available for your video card - or because you're using the binary nvidia driver.)

DavidM, the initramfs issue you cite has been fixed in the next upload of plymouth.

Steve - that will teach me to be impatient. Downloaded the latest software this morning. Still get the fsck and mountall issues. But can report I can still use the FRAMEBUFFER=y workaround described above to get a smooth plymouth from grub.

Thanks, Steve. I opened a new bug #549427.

Same here, I needed the FRAMEBUFFER=y workaround.

Not that kubuntu-desktop _is_ installed here, but cryptsetup is not. Meaning: if you don't know about the workaround, you won't get the splash screen. Is this a packaging issue?

Thanks!