Question About R13

[iainnitro]

This is perhaps a silly question, however, last looked at FreeBSD in 2012 and of course have used it on Macintosh (MacOS) for quite a while. I am currently running Arch Linux and want to take a look at FreeBSD again for the desktop. I can’t seem to find any info on booting silently with a splash screen like Ubuntu starts up or PopOS and have accomplished this on Arch with SystemD -boot and Plymouth. Is there a way to do this on FreeBSD!

Thanks in advance!
Michael

 

[Alexander88207]

Hello,

I can’t seem to find any info on booting silently with a splash screen

Put

boot_mute="YES"

in /boot/loader.conf.

 

[iainnitro]

Thanks. To add a splash screen too? Thanks so much for the help.

 

[SirDice]

sc(4) used to have a splash screen that worked quite nicely, vt(4) should have some splash screen capabilities but the documentation is scarce and the functionality limited (compared to the splash screen of sc(4)).

MateuszPiotrowski/ImproveVtSplashScreenSupport - FreeBSD Wiki

But loader(8) might have some tricks up its sleeve nowadays. With a graphics logo in the "beasty" menu, there may be other options available.

 

[iainnitro]

SirDice thank you. That gives me a couple of places to research.

 

[Alexander88207]

Thanks. To add a splash screen too? Thanks so much for the help.

Yes this silence the boot and shows a grey FreeBSD logo.

 

[Cath O'Deray]

What's the easiest way to visually mute the init(8) stage?

It's done by helloSystem, but I can't recall whether it's hacky.

(I don't want to mute it, but I'm curious.)

 

[Geezer]

Many versions ago, I used to use splash screen. I liked it. You could make your own graphics.

More recently, I have used boot_mute, which works reasonably well, until something goes wrong during the boot process. And then you are totally blind.

Much as though I like a graphicy experience (if I am physically at the machine), I think it is better not visually suppression the boot process.

 

[Cath O'Deray]

+1

… something goes wrong during the boot process. And then you are totally blind. …

Without editing any file, it's possible to be temporarily mute-free when you next attempt to boot.

Escape early (before the loader menu), then:

1. unset boot_mute
2. key Return or Enter.

There's an intention to make things more user-friendly in this area, but I don't have the bug report handy.

 

[Alain De Vos]

A few parameters you can tune in loader.conf, adapt to your liking,

beastie_disable="NO"
loader_delay="30"  
autoboot_delay="60" 
verbose_loading="YES"

 

[Cath O'Deray]

Also (somewhat opposite to what the opening poster wanted):

boot_verbose="YES"

<https://cgit.freebsd.org/src/tree/stand/common/help.common>