How do you modify lilo message=/boot/message content?

[Guest Les Hazelton]

Does anyone kow how to modify the image contained in the file /boot/message-graphic used to make the lilo graphic boot menu :?:

[ab2ms]

I'm in 9.0 , and found this:

Mandrake control center-->Boot-->boot config

 

not so sure about 8.2 etc. but 9 lets you choose themes for lilo and bootsplash.

Look around there and see if you can do what you are trying. Hope it helps....... Todd

[Guest Les Hazelton]

I am running mdk 9.0 and I have been using boot config. That is what got me into this swamp in the first place. I want to make my own theme including a lilo boot screen. I have the normal bootsplash in 3 sizes but so far, no luck with the lilo message file. I can make it work with a bmp image, but that takes much more adjustment in the lil.conf file.

 

Still, thanks for taking the time to reply.

[Guest Languid_Heap]

Hey, I've just been playing around with making my own background image for boot selection in LILO. Just to clarify, this is for the background image in LILO, where you select which boot option to load (Linux, Linux-nonfb, windows, floppy, etc.). This is not for the Bootsplash after boot selection in LILO, nor for the splash images in KDE or Gnome.

 

To set the stage, I'm using Mandrake 9.0 and LILO 22.3.2 -- if your specs are different you should check your docs, as i know that some of this differs with earlier versions of LILO. I found all of the documentation on this process in /usr/share/doc/lilo-22.3.2/README.bitmaps.bz2 (just issue a "man" or "vim" command on that file to read it).

 

**NOTE** when making changes to LILO, it's a *very* good idea to save a backup of your lilo.conf file before you get started. Additionally, you should make sure that you have some way of booting into Linux (emergency boot disk, mandrake CD, etc.) in the event that something goes terribly wrong. That said, here's what i did to make a custom LILO boot selection background image...

 

My version of LILO uses *only* bitmaps for the background image (more on that in the README.bitmaps), so the image you use needs to be a 640x480 Bitmap in 16 colors. My best results were with exporting a vector graphic with fewer than 16 colors to bitmap. Be prepared for uglification if you're trying to use a photo for your LILO background image. ;)

 

Now that you've got your bitmap, you need to put the LILO header information into that image so that LILO can use it. As root, issue this command "lilo -E yourbitmap.bmp"

 

This command will walk you through setting up all the LILO boot options such as layout, colors, and position of the timer and your boot selections (linux, windows, floppy, linux-nonfb, etc.). Note that when specifying colors, you are selecting from the pallette of 16 colors present in your bitmap.

 

When you're finished specifying those options, press W to write the header info to your bitmap. There's also an option to write that info to a separate .dat file which, in my case is basically a backup for those prefs we've just specified. Read more about the .dat file in the README.bitmaps file. The .dat file will be saved with the same name as your bitmap. Copy the .dat and .bmp to your /etc directory. Open up your lilo.conf file in your favorite editor and add the line "bitmap=yourbitmap.bmp"

If you have "message=/boot/message" in your lilo.conf, you will get a conflict error. Just use a "#" to comment out the "message=/boot/message" line in the event that you get this error.

 

Still as root, issue "/sbin/lilo" to write the changes to your lilo.conf file. Reboot, and delight in your own custom boot selection screen :D

 

I had to do a bit of tweaking in order to figure out corrresponding number for each color, and to get the layout/positioning just right. But it was SO worth it :)

 

As always, use at your own risk, YMMV, etc.

 

--

Lang

[Guest arsongt]

so let me get this right ... i cant use a 1024x768 image? the thing is that I have a laptop were if the image in not that size it just centers, but the rest of the screen is black. Plus do you know in what application can i open the read me? it has a bz2 estension and when I open them with some aplications all I get are weird caractes

[humaneasy]

Hi,

 

If you have "message=/boot/message" in your lilo.conf, you will get a conflict error. Just use a "#" to comment out the "message=/boot/message" line in the event that you get this error.

Do you know by chance how to make the message files?

I have a Script-fu that processes some parts but it seems that it is required a mkbootmsg script that seems to be SuSE specific

 

Best,

 

B) Lopo

Edited February 22, 2005 by humaneasy