When you boot from the 2006.0 LiveCD you see an awesome Gentoo bootlogo and progress-bar -- and you wish you could impress your friends with it during your usual bootup? Here we go:
Note: splashutils only work on x86 and amd64 architectures perfectly at the moment. Support for ppc is in progress.
Check your kernel-config to make sure that "Initial RAM disk (initrd) support" is built in. You can find the option in "Device Drivers" --> "Block devices" --> "RAM disk support".
Furthermore check that you are using an appropriate framebuffer for your video-card ("Graphics Support") or stick with the VESA-framebuffer. Usually splashutils should do the checks during the emerge-progress, but we want to be sure. Now tell your bootloader that it should load the initrd with the 2006.0-splash: The reccomended way is Device drivers/Graphic support/support for bla bla/VESA vga/vesafb-tng. Check it is vesafb-tng and not only vesafb|-
Then we need to emerge splashutils and splash-themes-livecd:
Code Listing 1: emerge splashutils and splash-themes-livecd
# emerge splash-themes-livecd splashutils is a dependency of splash-themes-livecd
Now we have to create an initial boot-disk. You are free to change the resolution to your choice, but choose one that is available as a config file in /etc/splash/livecd-2006.0/
Code Listing 2: Creation of an initrd with the 2006.0-splash
Be sure that /boot is mounted before you call the command # splash_geninitramfs -v -g /boot/splash-livecd-2006.0-1024x768 \ -r 1024x768 /etc/splash/livecd-2006.0
Code Listing 3: Configure the bootloader
# nano -w /boot/grub/grub.conf First change your kernel-boot-line to something like this (depends on your used framebuffer and further kernel-parameters): kernel /boot/kernel-2.6.16-r6 root=/dev/hda3 video=vesafb:1024x768-32@72 splash=silent,theme:livecd-2006.0 quiet CONSOLE=/dev/tty1 You must use more than 8bpp (in this example it is 32, specified by 1024x768-32@72).
Add the following line to your kernel-config:
initrd /boot/splash-livecd-2006.0-1024x768
Now we have that nice bootup-splash installed. Finally we want a permanent Gentoo statusbar at the bottom of our terminal-session, like on the LiveCD. Therefore we have to change the default theme in /etc/splash:
Code Listing 4: Change the default splash
# cd /etc/splash # rm default # ln -s livecd-2006.0 default
This splash should be started after bootup has finished:
Code Listing 5: Add splash to the default runlevel
# rc-update add splash default
If you want to finetune the splash-theme, you should have a look at /etc/conf.d/splash. Happy Gentooing!
Thanks to Michael Januszewski for his work on splashutils and Nicholas D. Wolfwood for the 2006.0-theme.
From http://www.gentoo.org/news/en/gwn/20050418-newsletter.xml Updated by petr.fiala&&gmail.com /*just fuck spam*/ 29.6.2006 hope it helps and again big thx to Michael Januszewski
P.S. emerge bootsplash-themes for more themes than just the install logo.