Plymouth

Resources

Plymouth is Article description::a bootsplash used to show splash screens during system boot and shutdown. It provides flicker-free animated boot splashes with support for progress bars, solar flares, and other nifty things. In addition to OpenRC, it also has full systemd support.

Installation

Kernel

Specific kernel options must be altered in order to get Plymouth working properly. Use the genkernel --menuconfig all command (or equivalent) in order to modify the kernel configuration.

Bootup logo

It is highly advised to disable the Linux bootup logo. On some systems having the bootup logo displayed seems to cause problems.

KERNEL This example shows the correct way to disable the bootup logo:

Device Drivers --->
   Graphics Support --->
      [ ] Bootup logo  --->

Important
Be sure to enable kernel modesetting (KMS) for the system's respective graphics card.

KMS for Intel cards

KERNEL Intel onboard GPUs set to use modesetting:

Device Drivers --->
   Graphics Support --->
      <*> Direct Rendering Manager (XFree86 4.1.0 and higher DRI support)  --->
         <*>   Intel 8xx/9xx/G3x/G4x/HD Graphics
         [*]     Enable modesetting on intel by default

Important
If this is the user's first time modifying settings for on-board Intel GPUs the Intel article should be referenced for additional configuration.

KMS for Nvidia cards (Nouveau drivers)

KERNEL NVIDIAGPU set to use Nouveau:

Device Drivers  --->
    Graphics support  --->
        <*> Direct Rendering Manager (XFree86 4.1.0 and higher DRI support) --->
            <*> Nouveau (nVidia) cards

Important
If this is the user's first time changing settings for the NVIDIA graphics card using the nouveau driver be sure to reference the nouveau article for additional information.

KMS for Nvidia cards (official drivers)

To use the official Nvidia drivers see the wiki's official Nvidia-drivers article.

Note
So far the results of using official Nvidia-drivers are untested with Plymouth.

KMS for Radeon cards

KERNEL Radeon GPU set to use modesetting:

Device Drivers --->
   [*] Staging drivers  --->
      [*]     Enable modesetting on radeon by default

Important
If this is the user's first time setting up a Radeon graphics card be sure to reference the radeon article for further information.

USE flags

USE flags for sys-boot/plymouth Graphical boot animation (splash) and logger

`debug`	Enable extra debug codepaths, like asserts and extra output. If you want to get meaningful backtraces see https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Quality_Assurance/Backtraces
`gtk`	Add support for x11-libs/gtk+ (The GIMP Toolkit)
`libkms`	Provides abstraction to the DRM drivers (intel, nouveau and vmwgfx at this moment)
`pango`	Adds support for printing text on splash screen and text prompts, e.g. for password
`split-usr`	Enable this if /bin and /usr/bin are separate directories
`static-libs`	Build static versions of dynamic libraries as well
`udev`	Enable virtual/udev integration (device discovery, power and storage device support, etc)

Data provided by the Gentoo Package Database · Last update: 2020-09-20 08:37 More information about USE flags

Emerge

The sys-boot/plymouth package can be installed by running:

root #emerge --ask sys-boot/plymouth

Configuration

/etc/plymouth/plymouthd.conf - the sole configuration file for Plymouth. It can be left untouched. Selecting theme is described in further section.

Building Initramfs

Bootsplashes are loaded by initramfs so they need to be included in it.

Although there are plans to do so, at this point in time, genkernel cannot create an initramfs with a Plymouth theme included. Therefore, in order to proceed, either use dracut or manually build your own initramfs.

Initramfs Generators

1. Dracut

Dracut (sys-kernel/dracut) is an alternative initramfs generator created by the Fedora development team. Before reading the rest of Dracut guide, here is a fun fact: both Plymouth and Dracut are cities in Massachusetts. This is speculation. However, it would appear, the creators of these programs might have taken this into consideration.

Follow this link for Dracut installation instructions. Dracut should enable Plymouth automatically if it is installed.

Manual initramfs creation

When creating a manual initramfs, for example using Custom_Initramfs, it is possible to bundle Plymouth.

First, disable udev USE flag for Plymouth (it will not display anything until udev is properly initialized). Otherwise udev will need to be added to the initramfs as well.

root #echo "sys-boot/plymouth -udev" >> /etc/portage/package.use

root #emerge --ask sys-boot/plymouth

Then, populate the initramfs with the plymouth files and theme. While it may be done manually, the better way is utilizing /usr/libexec/plymouth/plymouth-populate-initrd. It will deliver all the binaries, config and themes needed (only the theme that is enabled, so do not forget to re-execute when changing theme).

The script will copy all the files to selected directory.

Add this code snippet to the initramfs generation script, just before the initramfs packing:

FILE /path/to/the/generator.shInitramfs generation script

<syntaxhighlight lang="bash">....
 
# populate plymouth if available
if [ -x /usr/libexec/plymouth/plymouth-populate-initrd ]
then
        /usr/libexec/plymouth/plymouth-populate-initrd -t $INITRAM_DIR
fi
 
....</syntaxhighlight>

Finally, update the actual init script in initramfs:

FILE /path/to/your/initYour init file

<syntaxhighlight lang="bash">....
 
# Plymouth needs /dev/pts mounted
mount -t devtmpfs none /dev                                                                                                                                                                                      
mkdir /dev/pts                                                                                                                                                                                                   
mount -t devpts /dev/pts /dev/pts
 
....
 
# early in the process start plymouthd and show splash
if [[ -x /usr/sbin/plymouthd -a -x /usr/bin/plymouth ]]
then
        mkdir -p /run/plymouth
        /usr/sbin/plymouthd --attach-to-session --pid-file /run/plymouth/pid --mode=boot
        /usr/bin/plymouth show-splash
fi
 
....</syntaxhighlight>

Init systems

systemd

Plymouth automatically registers itself with systemd to show splash screens during shutdown and restart. No additional configuration is required.

OpenRC

There is a plugin for Plymouth that extends a single line version of OpenRC's status to the framebuffer. It can be installed via:

root #emerge --ask sys-boot/plymouth-openrc-plugin

No additional configuration for the plugin is necessary, it should be operational next time Plymouth is ran. To remove this functionality simply uninstall the plugin.

Additionally, make sure that the RC is non-interactive. Edit the /etc/rc.conf file:

FILE /etc/rc.confRC configuration for Plymouth example

<syntaxhighlight lang="bash">rc_interactive="NO"</syntaxhighlight>

Bootloaders

GRUB2

When using GRUB2, an update to GRUB2's configuration file must be made in order to enable the splash screen during early boot. Append the options quiet splash to the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT variable. You might also want to adjust the resolution in the GRUB_GFXMODE variable to match the desired resolution for the monitor, and set GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX to "keep" in order to preserve the graphics mode during the entire boot.

This all can be performed by modifying the /etc/default/grub configuration file:

FILE /etc/default/grubConfiguring GRUB2 for Plymouth

<syntaxhighlight lang="text">GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT='quiet splash'
GRUB_GFXMODE=1366x768x24
GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX=keep</syntaxhighlight>

Themes

After emerging Plymouth a number of themes will be pulled in automatically, however more Plymouth themes can be downloaded from the web and installed manually. Extract the downloaded themes to the Plymouth theme directory: /usr/share/plymouth/themes

Make sure each new theme is contained in its own folder (just like the default themes that are installed) or they will not be detected by Plymouth.

Once the themes have been extracted verify successful extraction by requesting Plymouth to generate a list of all available themes. Do this using the plymouth-set-default-theme command:

root #plymouth-set-default-theme --list

Assuming the solar theme is desired as the system's theme, run:

root #plymouth-set-default-theme solar

Note
The solar theme will be used for the rest of the examples in this article. Simply replace solar anywhere it appears with one of the other themes listed when using the plymouth-set-default-theme command to set a different theme.

It is possible to create themes for Plymouth. See the Theme creation article for more information.

Usage

Regenerate manually or if dracut is used, use the dracut command to regenerate it:

root #dracut --force

As long as the configuration has been performed properly, this will pack the selected Plymouth theme into the initramfs.

Then regenerate GRUB config to use the initramfs and apply your GRUB2 graphical settings:

root #grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

Note
For Plymouth to work as intended the proper GRUB2 video modules must also be loaded. Generally the correct video modules are loaded by default on Gentoo, so inserting additional ones is not usually needed. If frame buffer or video problems are being experienced with GRUB2, be sure to investigate missing modules as a possible culprit.

Tips

According to the README file distributed with Plymouth, boot messages are dumped to /var/log/boot.log after the root filesystem has been mounted read-write.

External resources

An early Gentoo guide for Plymouth (by Gentoo developer Amadeusz Żołnowski (aidecoe) ).
Plymouth on Gentoo (Funtoo) – Revisited - Anders Evenrud's Blog
Plymouth on gentoo - Anders Evenrud's Blog (old)
Red Hat 7's Plymouth documentation - Describes how to create a theme using the two-step plugin.

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