Changing The Bootup Splash In Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex

At the time of this writing, as far as I can tell this cannot be done. What? you don't want to hear that? I didn't either! One of the first things I always do after a fresh install of Ubuntu is change the boot up usplash splash screen.

For some reason there is a bug in the new version (8.10 Intrepid Ibex) that will not let you do this. Sure you can go through the motions, but when you reboot you might see a quick flash of an error saying:

acpid:exiting

When you boot back up... No splash screen, just scrolling white letters!

I also have a laptop that I installed using the Alternate Install CD so I could encrypt the drive. That is even worse. If I try to change the boot up splash it won't boot at all. I have to boot to the recovery option.

For those of you keeping up with the blog, I just released my newest version of Bauer-Puntu Linux, which is a custom Ubuntu based distro without the shit brown, and with pentesting tools pre-installed. I needed a custom splash for that. So how did I do it?

I had to switch splash software, that's how. I uninstalled usplash:

sudo apt-get remove usplash --purge

Then I installed splashy. You can install it with apt-get, but there is a newer version available here:

libsplashy1_0.3.10-1_i386.deb
splashy_0.3.10-1_i386.deb

Download both, and install them both. If you don't know how to install deb packages from the command line, that is okay. You can just double click on them and follow the prompts ;-)

After installing splashy, you will want to edit /boot/grub/menu.lst by adding vga=791 to the end of your kernel boot option like so:

kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27-7-generic root=UUID=3dca6051-5877-438c-94c5-f5ff7803d851 ro quiet splash

and add vga=791 at the end of it so it reads:

kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27-7-generic root=UUID=3dca6051-5877-438c-94c5-f5ff7803d851 ro quiet splash vga=791

After you are done, from the terminal run:

sudo update-grub

Now reboot, and you should see a new splashy splash screen in place of the ugly Ubuntu usplash screen.


Here is my customized splashy screen from Bauer-Puntu 8.10:



This of course is just a workaround. If you know of a way to fix usplash in Ubuntu 8.10 I am all ears. Please let me know in the comments, or at least post a link to a how to.

Posted in: 8.10, ibex, intrepid, splash, splashy, ubuntu, usplash