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I am looking for a GRUB theme with a background image and a terminal box that is actually the console, where when the system is booting the boot messages that are written to the console are displayed. Is there something out there that does this that I can modify?

I'm running both 18.04 and 16.04.

JonBelanger
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    This question has been asked before and there doesn't appear to be a solution. You can set it up to display messages. If interested I'll dig up the answers after work. Let me know. – WinEunuuchs2Unix Apr 24 '19 at 17:25
  • I looked for this question having already been asked, but could not find anything that was what I'm asking. – JonBelanger Apr 25 '19 at 12:39
  • I'll put the clarigication here:

    What I'm looking to do is have the grub theme display, then when the system starts its booting, the theme remains, but the console output is placed in the terminal box, and finally once the system has booted does the Ubuntu login screen get display (replacing the grub theme). I don't know if this is possible or not, but the documentation for grub is not really clear in this area.

     – JonBelanger Apr 25 '19 at 12:42
  • I understand what you want. I wanted that last year and many other people have wanted it for years. All the Q&A I've read sY – WinEunuuchs2Unix Apr 25 '19 at 15:07

2 Answers2

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There is a way to display boot messages in terminal, without any theme changes:
sudo gedit /etc/default/grub
Find this line

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"

And change it to:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=""

Or even more boot messages:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="no_console_suspend initcall_debug"

To change background add this line: (or install grub theme)

GRUB_BACKGROUND=”/pathtofolder/picture.png”

Then execute the following command and reboot the system:
sudo update-grub

Note:

If we want to change the Background of grub menu, the image should be PNG, JPG or TGA image. JPG/ JPEG images must be 8-bit (256 color). Else you will get errors, so the PNG images are preferable. Images should be non-indexed, RGB.

The GIMP image editor is one application which can edit images to conform to the GRUB 2 standards. Use the Image > Mode menu options to set the properties to RGB and ensure the mode is not set to Indexed

LeonidMew
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  • Maybe I should go a bit further.

    I want the background image to remain while the console output is displayed. Right now the image goes away when the console output is displayed. I'd like to have a terminal box on top of the background image where the console output is displayed. Does this make sense?

     – JonBelanger Apr 24 '19 at 23:28
  • Doesn't the terminal box already open up but blank? – WinEunuuchs2Unix Apr 24 '19 at 23:38
  • @WinEunuuchs2Unix Its not blank in 18.04(OP run 18.04 and 16.04), when removing quiet splash – LeonidMew Apr 25 '19 at 07:00
  • Yes, a terminal box is opened, but it is not used for the console output. When the system is booting, the screen blanks and shows the console. I would like to have the console output redirected to the terminal box. leaving the background in place. – JonBelanger Apr 25 '19 at 12:37
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As I posted in comment you can have the terminal box open but it will be blank. If you are booting a previous kernel version Grub automatically prints a message saying what version is loading:

grub.gif

If you are booting the newest kernel version the terminal box stays blank. To get around this limitation see this answer: Grub theme terminal-box appearing, why?

Shockingly the most pleasing grub themed boot is with Windows 10. The grub theme stays ~98% intact and Windows 10 draws a tiny pizza spinner on the screen which stays there until Windows User Signin screen appears. With Linux the terminal box will stay up until Kernel boot messages start spamming a plain text console.

WinEunuuchs2Unix
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