[SOLVED]!!!!!!!! Anyway to hide 'Grub Loading..' & 'Welcome to Grub' messages at startup before Grub menu screen

[BitterTruth]

EDIT: SEE POST#15 FOR THE SOLUTIONS.

Hello there everyone. First post here, although I have visited the forum many times before to resolve issues.
I have to say it YOU GUYS ARE AWESOME. I've been running MX15 on a ThinkPad T410 for about 4 years now and I have loved every minute of it. Coming from Windows, MX15 has been an eye opener. Rock solid, sleek, beautiful and almost every setting you could want at your fingertips. It has served me well. I have not needed to update to the newer releases since it worked so well, but since MX15 and MX16 are no longer supported, I thought I would go ahead and take the plunge to MX19.2 today. The reason I didn't do it earlier is because I didn't want to mess up my separate /home partition, programs or settings. It turns out, I needn't have worried at all.

After watching Dolphin Oracle's excellent videos and taking lots of photos of system settings, I went ahead and made a MX19 live usb by downloading the 64bit iso and then using the 'Restore disk image' option in GNOME-Disk utility. I didn't use the recommended MX Live USB Creator as I've had problems with it before along with netbootin and rufus too, but this, I have found to be a foolproof way of making a bootable live usb. Just pop in the USB, open DISKS, and point the 'Restore Disk Image' option to the where the iso is located. Done in about a minute.

Anyway, everything went really smoothly after that. The install itself took about 5 minutes! My /home partition was preserved perfectly since I chose to keep the same user details (name and password). I highly recommend keeping a separate /home partition, by the way, since ALL my MX15 system customisations and tweaks were also preserved, even firefox bookmarks!!!! Programs too (PlayonLinux and Microsoft included). All hardware is working and my core temps are down from about 60C to around 39C as well. AMAAAAAZING! And why I love MXLinux so much!

The only small problems I've had were with fonts in firefox which kept using a horrible font for the bookmarks toolbar no matter where I changed my font settings (system or in firefox). I think the only thing that was needed was probably a reboot because the fonts are ok now. I have managed to get everything looking the way I had it in MX15 (I even downloaded the MX15 wallpapers from MX Package Installer). I've gotten rid of the splash screen and replaced it with an image (squam lake from MX15).

The other slight niggling issue for me is that on startup I get to see 'Grub loading .... Welcome to Grub!' for a fraction of a second before the grub menu screen comes up. It wasn't visible on MX15 bootup. Is there a way to hide it by any chance through editing /etc/default/grub? It's not a big deal, but MX15's bootup was so elegant on my ThinkPad, I just loved watching it startup

Iv'e looked in to it a bit and it looks like according to Arch forums, you have to downloaded the grub2 source code and recompile it with some lines removed. However, before I try getting into all that, I thought I would check with you guys here first since the awesome devs already thought to include the MX Tools Boot Options applet (I've chosen the 'limited Messages option, but it doesn't make a difference).

I probably should have left out the 'Install grub' option during the installation but oh well. Any help is much appreciated.

[JayM]

I think the grub loading and welcome messages have always been there but just went past too fast for you to see them before. AFAIK the only way to get rid of them would be to modify the grub2 source code and recompile. I would just ignore them. Or, if you have an HDD you could replace it with a much faster SSD so your boot process would be faster, not to mention everything else.

[tony37]

I have an SSD and I see the 'Welcome to Grub' message too. I found the thread on the Arch forum you talked about at https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=209207 and the command mentioned in the second to last post worked for me. But you either have to open a root terminal to do it, or you can use my modified command using sudo:

Code: Select all

echo -n -e \\x00 | sudo tee patch && cat grubx64.efi | strings -t d | grep "Welcome to GRUB!" | awk '{print $1;}' | sudo xargs -I{} dd if=patch of=grubx64.efi obs=1 conv=notrunc seek={}

It worked for me, but generally when you're doing stuff like this, you should know what to do when your pc doesn't boot.
(this assumes you're using EFI and 64bit)

[BitterTruth]

Yeah i saw that but I'm not using EFI so had to dismiss it.

I'm still playing with it and the more I play with it, the more it's annoying me, LOL. . I've tried grub-customizer but haven't found anything extra in there that's not already in MX Boot Options and /etc/default/grub (except the font size & colour options). It's not just the 'Welcome' message anymore. The scrolling message font is larger now and I only get to see only some of the messages even if I remove the 'hush' entry from GRUB's kernel parameters entry. If i remove 'quiet' then it's text overload, LOL

I did:

grub-install --version

and got:
grub-install (GRUB) 2.04-9~mx19+5

I don't know what version MX15 used but I'm assuming it was 2.00.

Do you think it might be worth installing the grub bootloader that came with MX15 instead of the one that's with MX19 to see if that removes the messages?
On the plus side, boot up time is slightly faster.

[tony37]

It's not just the 'Welcome' message anymore. The scrolling message font is larger now and I only get to see only some of the messages even if I remove the 'hush' entry from GRUB's kernel parameters entry. If i remove 'quiet' then it's text overload, LOL

I don't really know which 'hush' parameter you're talking about, can you explain?

[tony37]

I had a try at recompiling the grub source code, I installed bison, flex and pkg-config, but I keep getting error messages like:

Code: Select all

./configure: line 33072: syntax error near unexpected token `FREETYPE,'
./configure: line 33072: `PKG_CHECK_MODULES(FREETYPE, freetype2,'

[tony37]

Now I made some progress, I had to restart from scratch from the tar.xz file and then just "./configure" and "make". I also installed unifont, maybe that helped.

[BitterTruth]

[/quote]
I don't really know which 'hush' parameter you're talking about, can you explain?
[/quote]

I used MXTOOLS --> Boot Options tool. I changed the MESSAGES setting to limited and I think the tool adds the word 'hush' to the kernel parameters box. When you APPLY the settings (it's like updating grub), the tool adds

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet hush" to /etc/default/grub

Doesn't work. Welcome messages are still visible.

I also removed grub using the apt get purge and then installed it again. NOT RECOMMENDED AS IT DIDN'T DO ANYTHING. MAYBE BECAUSE IT JUST REINSTALLED THE 2.04 VERSION AGAIN.

Ending up removing mx-apps, os-prober, mx-installer along with grub and had to manually install them after reinstalling grub. My system is back to how it was but to be honest I think the only way really is to recompile it.

As for the errors you are getting, it's a bit beyond me but I'll take a look in to it when I come back in a while.

[tony37]

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet hush" to /etc/default/grub

Doesn't work. Welcome messages are still visible.

That would be for booting the kernel, nothing to do with the Grub binary itself. The 'welcome to Grub' message appears before any kernel is selected.

[Helen-Earth]

(I also removed grub using the apt get purge and then installed it again. NOT RECOMMENDED AS IT DIDN'T DO ANYTHING. MAYBE BECAUSE IT JUST REINSTALLED THE 2.04 VERSION AGAIN.) Holy Smokes if you take something away and then put back again why would anything be different.

Removing grub at anytime is a dangerous thing to do you were lucky you did not end up at the grub rescue screen or even worse just a blank screen.