So, this is an inversion of the classic question: "Why is my terminal blank on boot?" — How do I make my terminal blank on boot?
I'm creating a Debian Wheezy system with GRUB as the boot loader that will output video over nodm ("no display manager" — requires no user login). I don't want users to see any boot information on their video screen at startup.
At the display manager level I use nodm and that seems to work great.
At the GRUB level I'm using these params in /etc/default/grub (and then running update-grub):
GRUB_DEFAULT=0
GRUB_FORCE_HIDDEN_MENU=true
GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT=0
GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT_QUIET=true
GRUB_TIMEOUT=0
GRUB_TIMEOUT_STYLE=hidden
GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR=
#GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR=`lsb_release -i -s 2> /dev/null || echo Debian`
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="silent splash loglevel=3 console=tty2 earlyprintk=tty2"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=""
And for inittab I use a custom program:
#!/bin/sh
cat -
/etc/inittab:
1:2345:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 -i -w -n -l /usr/bin/nothing tty1
Then finally I'm tweaking the BIOS settings as much as it will allow me.
The log output I still see appears to be GRUB related, it's roughly as follows:
"Booting GNU/Linux .... " <-- I think this is the GRUB option at index 0 that is loading
"Decompressing the kernel"
"Booting the kernel" <-- not sure if these are GRUB or Kernel related?
Does anyone have some advice on purging these final bits of text?
–Update–:
This link indicates those final lines may require a kernel patch to remove:
Best Answer
The GRUB banner is printed before configuration files are read, so the only way to get rid of them is patching the source or the binaries. There is prior art in this field, though, if you really mean it. Syslinux behaves the same in this respect. The boot loader banner is often used as a "progress bar": different parts of it are printed by different stages of the bootstrap.
On the other hand, most kernel log messages (everything besides serious errors) are suppressed by the
quietkernel parameter. Try that instead ofsilent.