Plymouth text version

[Len Ovens]

On Mon, November 12, 2012 10:28 am, lukefromdc at hushmail.com wrote:
> The long blank screen is because of plymouth not loading when the
> initramfs loads. This was an intentional decision by Ubuntu to avoid
> slowing down the boot process by including the necessary video modules, a
> font , etc in the initramfs. This is for actual installs, not for the
> installer itself, which loads plymouth early. The simplest way to
> duplicate this in an installed system is to install cryptsetup. This
> forces "framebuffer=y" on the initramfs and forces the necessary changes
> to run plymouth as soon as the kernel switches video modes. All that is to
> pretty up the password entry interface for users of encrypted systems,
> like all of mine.

Interesting. I was not aware plymouth started so late on installs. I was
under the assumption it still started in initramfs.
>
> In short, there are two cases where plymouth actually works right: live
> installers and machines with cryptsetup installed, with or without any
> encrypted partitions.

I don't know if we want to install cryptsetup by default just to get
plymouth to work. -settings may be able to set this up though... or maybe
-look should  do that?
>
> I remember reading that Ubuntu had planned to get default installs
> beginning with 12.04 to boot without using an initramfs at all, but people
> stopped talking about that and I do not know how or if that ever panned
> out, given all my installs are encrypted and thus this would not be
> tested.

They are still there. Someone has probably found out why they were put
there in the first place  :)

-- 
Len Ovens
www.OvenWerks.net