debian boot hide all messages

Question

I am trying to configure a debian Lenny server to hide all technical messages on screen during boot, up until the invite to login (in CLI, no X server). As a bonus, it would be great if I can add some ascii art.

First I configured my grub with quiet, and I uncommented the line kernel.printk = 4 4 1 7 in /etc/sysctl.conf.

That was better, but near the end I still see init.d messages like Starting apache server [Ok] ....

In an another attempt, I used uspash and splashy, but they quit when entering level 2, so these solutions still show a lot of messages on screen. I checked the position of usplash in rc*.d/ and it seemed ok, I even tried removing it (the script is supposed to stop the Loading image and re-init screen & font), but it still exits when entering run level 2.

Any advice?

Edit: that website http://www.jmadden.eu/index.php/2007/05/31/customise-usplash-in-debian/ , also http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=46317 gives a hint at the end, but it's not working ... So for the moment I have found a dirty (but working) solution :

update-rc.d -f console-screen.sh remove
update-rc.d -f console-setup remove
update-rc.d console-setup defaults 99 1
update-rc.d console-screen.sh defaults 99 1

Answer 1

Consider installing plymouth, it is a graphical boot menu, hiding all details, requires kms though

Answer 2

You may have to do this the long way.... For each script in /etc/init.d that's loaded at your runlevel, find the 'start' section and for each call to 'log_msg' or equivalent add '>/dev/null 2>&1' to the end of the line. This will stop the messages at start up but it may not be the most elegant solution. diJenerate

Answer 3

I have not done this myself, but since nobody else has chimed in...

In addition to the stuff you've tried you probably want to set VERBOSE=no in /etc/default/rcS.