1024x768 usplash theme and "vga=791" together...possible?

[eco2geek]

It's been asked before, but searching hasn't yielded a satisfactory answer.

I'd like to use "vga=791" in GRUB, so that when I switch to a console, it's in 1024x768 mode, rather than 640x480 mode. However, the usplash theme provided with K/Ubuntu only works correctly in 640x480 mode.

Is there a way to get a 1024x768-compatible usplash theme, and be able to put "vga=791" in the line that boots Kubuntu, at the same time?

[Rog131]

Re: 1024x768 usplash theme and "vga=791" together...possible?

Maybe these help:

USplashCustomizationHowto
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/US...omizationHowto

HOWTO: Change the default usplash colors
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=82835

[kubicle]

Re: 1024x768 usplash theme and "vga=791" together...possible?

Just a quick check, have you tried editing /etc/usplash.conf for the correct resolution?

[eco2geek]

Re: 1024x768 usplash theme and "vga=791" together...possible?

I didn't know "usplash.conf" existed. Thanks for the info.

After editing it to the correct resolution, usplash displays correctly (i.e. centered on the screen) when shutting down, but when booting up it's off-center, to the lower right, and the boot messages at the bottom are off-screen.

I'll just disable it.

[eco2geek]

Re: 1024x768 usplash theme and "vga=791" together...possible?

The solution is that Ubuntu's "initramfs" contains its own version of usplash.conf, and modifying it to match the desired vga setting makes it centered on-screen.

So the idea is to decompress a copy of "initrd.img-2.6.20-16-generic" (or whatever yours is), which is a gzipped cpio archive, make the desired change, recompress it, and replace the old one. Thanks to Google, it's easy to find a Linux Journal article where someone's already done the heavy lifting, and shows us how to decompress and recompress "initrd.img" on an Ubuntu system.

After (as root) decompressing the initrd.img to a temp directory, changing the values in its /etc/usplash.conf to 1024x768, recompressing it, moving it back to /boot, and adding "vga=791" to the kernel line in /boot/grub/menu.lst, the graphics are nicely centered on the screen.

So it would seem that /etc/usplash.conf (in the regular filesystem) only affects what you see when you're shutting down the system.

On an unrelated note, I was futzing around with GNOME the other day, and installed something -- I don't know what, exactly -- that rendered kdm unable to boot into KDE (i.e. kdm started up fine, then the screen blanked, and kdm came up again). Doing a dpkg-reconfigure -plow xserver-xorg made not a bit of difference. There were no notable error messages in the logfiles. It was easier to reinstall than to try to figure out what the heck happened. (How Windows-like!)

[kubicle]

Re: 1024x768 usplash theme and "vga=791" together...possible?

Ah, sorry, the initramfs should be updated as well as you found out

sudo update-initramfs -u

'should' do it

[eco2geek]

Re: 1024x768 usplash theme and "vga=791" together...possible?

Well, now. "update-initramfs" picks up the changes. That's certainly easier than dealing with arcane cpio commands.