Allow pressing escape to see boot messages

Thanks for this bug report. I think that this idea is very interesting, I set the Importance to Wishlist. Also, you can suggest/vote this idea in the ubuntu brainstorm at http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/ to see if there is people also interested by this idea.

Thanks for your comment. I do think it's important to state that this isn't a wish for a "new" feature, but a critical bug report on an old one.

Adding support for pressing Esc during boot to show the messages would be novel for Ubuntu (though absolutely standard everywhere else).

BUT, the failure to parse the kernel command-line, and react to either "splash=none" or "single" is a definite bug. This used to work fine. I think there is a bug in either the kernel or the liveCD bootloader.

RichardNeill : Thanks for being active on your bug report. Normally, to disable splash during one boot time, you can just remove splash from the actual boot line. From the LiveCD, you can do it by typing F6. From your computer, you can do it by accessing your Grub menu (this is often by pressing Esc) and by editing the boot line of the kernel you want to boot by pressing "e" to edit and "b" to boot. If splash is removed from the boot line, you have access to console messages. Can you confirm that it works correctly for you?

I just saw this come across uploads to hardy, possibly related:

grub2 (1.96+20080203-1ubuntu2)

    * Update 03_ubuntu_grub_standards.
          o Don't show splash screen or quiet mode in single user mode.

This is easily remedied by either commenting out the "quiet" option in grub or the live CD, getting rid of "splash" helps, too.

Either the description should be changed to "Allow pressing escape to see boot messages" or this bug should be closed, as the functionality requested already exists.

hackel - you're more than welcome to change the bug title to something more descriptive. No need to ask someone else to do it

the ubuntu startup manager allows splash to be disable and enable text message boots, but I don't want them always - OK 'I' do, but I think it is a good trouble shooting option, for modules, network, drive checks etc, that others will not always want, but very useful when desired.

Using the Ubuntu startup manager to disable the selection item 'boot splash' and enable the selection item 'show text during boot' does NOT enable the esc key access to the terminal logging startup information.
Tested with 9.04

This bug was fixed in the package usplash - 0.5.47

---------------
usplash (0.5.47) karmic; urgency=low

  [ Colin Watson ]
  * Dismiss splash screen if Escape is pressed outside an INPUT* command
    (LP: #195666).

  [ Scott James Remnant ]
  * Build on the above patch adding an ESCAPE command that takes the pid
    of a process. When Escape is pressed, if this command has been received
    and no further INPUT* commands received, SIGINT is sent to that process
    instead.

 -- Scott James Remnant <email address hidden> Tue, 20 Oct 2009 11:23:34 +0100

So after this fix, how do you make truly verbose startup messages occur without hitting ESC? Maybe this is a different bug, but removing the quiet and splash parameters in karmic doesn't make things as verbose as it should (and used to).

Hitting ESC as recently as the 9.10 RC live CD showed verbose information (all stdout/stderr output by init scripts), but now after this fix hitting ESC kills startup processes potentially causing big problems, for example trying to hit ESC I've gotten messages like:
mountall: Cancelled
General error mounting filesystems

Even with the quiet and splash boot parameters removed in karmic, (and even with usplash uninstalled) you only get the basic messages output by commands like log_begin_message and not anything sent to stdout or stderr like you would in jaunty and all previous releases. If they're just going to a different virtual terminal I couldn't find them there either.

So how can I see ALL messages from the init scripts now that the ESC key functionality has essentially been taken away?

you might need to try terminal 1 or 8, messages go to both terminals now

ctrl+alt+f1 ctrl+alt+f8

ctrl+alt+f7 to return to the terminal running X.

the following command may show you the info you want to see:

dmesg | less

sorry if this isn't helpful

regards

Had a case today that the boot-process halted while the splash was on. CTRL+ALT+Fx did NOT work and no message showed up what the problem could be.

What do you "usability-experts" expect a normal user to do about such a situation?

May I tell you?

I guess the average user willing to switch to free software will pop its old Windows7-recovery-disk into the optical drive, restart and leave for good.

For the last time:

Hiding information from the user is NOT helping anybody. It is wrong. Wrong, because it shows a lack of respect for the intellectual capabilities of the average user. And wrong because it leads to situations, where a trivial problem will look so severe, that it proves fatal.

Start thinking about this please.

btw: I really cannot give any more informations about what the problem was for I have no such informations. All I can tell is that I saw a crude graphics-animation that was frozen.

BTW, the best-of-breed here is quite clearly Gentoo (you can easily see it with the Live CD) - who manage to make the boot messages both informative and pretty. In my view, it's much more elegant than the animation (especially when the animation's progress bar doesn't have 100%=100%, but can go round again!). The WinXP boot screen is a perfect example of how not to do it.

I love the fact that with Ubuntu, most of the time, things "just work", and look simple. But I really really wish that the complexity wasn't hidden. Things should be "as simple as possible, but no simpler".