How to get a simpler (text only?) startup sequence?

[Chris Green]

On Sun, Dec 09, 2012 at 04:30:08PM +0100, Kaj Haulrich wrote:
> On 12/09/2012 03:03 PM, Chris Green wrote:
> >Once upon a time when I booted my linux box I watched a load of text
> >flow past, got a login, logged in, ran startx and it all worked,
> >quickly!
> >
> >Now when I boot my linux box (well, any one of several actually) I see
> >*nothing* between the BIOS screen and the pretty (?) lubuntu/xubuntu
> >screen asking me to log in.  Increasingly I'm seeing *long* delays on
> >the way as Network Manager and Plymouth between them waste my time
> >waiting for networks to configure themselves (or not).  On my laptop in
> >particular it's getting steadily worse as I alternate regularly between
> >wired and WiFi network connections and the system really doesn't cope
> >with this well.
> >
> >I have tried to tell grub to tell me what's happenning as it goes but it
> >appears incapable of working on any of my systems, I just get a blank
> >screen during boot whatever I do.
> >
> >Can I remove all of the plymouth junk and as a result get a text only
> >login sequence or is there more to it than that?  I have already removed
> >Network Manager and replaced it with wicd which has made some things
> >work better.
> >
> You will have to edit - as root -  the following line in /etc/default/grub
> and remove the quiet and splash between the quotation marks, so it reads
> 
> GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=""
> 
> save the file, and then from the command line:
> 
> sudo update-grub
> 
> reboot and enjoy lots of text scroll by.
> 
OK, it's an improvement, at least I see *something* at boot time.

There are still the long delays caused by plymouth waiting for a
network that's not there (the hardwired interface) on my laptop.  What
I see is 20 seconds or so of nothing, then a dozen lines or so
of starting/stopping information, then:-

    Waiting for network configuration
    Waiting for up to 60 more seconds for network configuration

These are new, never used to happen, and add a couple of minutes or more
to the boot time.

-- 
Chris Green