splash makes grub menu invisible

Bug #31743 reported by Oren_B
48
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
grub (Ubuntu)
Fix Released
Medium
Michael Vogt

Bug Description

I have Dapper Drake and Windows 2000 installed on my machine. I did an update on February 16, around midday GMT, and noticed that a new version of grub was installed. Next time I rebooted my computer the grub menu did not show up - all I saw was a blank screen and a cursor. Later I found that I can use the arrow keys to select which OS to boot, so it looks like grub works fine except for the display problem.

Colin Watson (cjwatson)
Changed in grub:
assignee: nobody → mvo
Revision history for this message
calimarno (calimarno) wrote :

I had the same problem and it's probably linked to the add of a splashimage in the ubuntu-artwork package.

Revision history for this message
Ming Hua (minghua) wrote :

I have the same problem. I didn't pay attention to the messages when I update grub from 0.97-1ubuntu3 to 0.97-1ubuntu4 (it was among a big update of many packages), but when I run update-grub I see

Searching for splash image ... found but preserving previous setting: splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/default-splash.xpm.gz

And indeed I have a /boot/grub/default-splash.xpm.gz file, which is a symlink to /etc/alternatives/grub-artwork. But the problem is my /boot and / are on different partitions! So apparently this won't work.

I copied /usr/share/pixmaps/grub/ubuntu-artwork.xpm.gz as /boot/grub/default-splash.xpm.gz, overwriting the symlink. Now at boot I have a grub menu. But in my opinion it's (1) much slower ,(2) off the center position on my screen, and (3) harder to use. But that's probably for another bug.

Revision history for this message
Oren_B (oren.barnea) wrote :

Thank you Arnaud and Ming. I'm still a Linux newbie and I don't feel confident enough to make the changes you suggest so I think I'll keep things the way they are now, but I'll keep your replies in mind in case this problem isn't fixed and I need to see the menu.

Revision history for this message
hda (hda) wrote :

Same problem here on a Acer TM 2001LM laptop with ATI 9000 IGP display adapter. Found a solution by manually editing menu.lst and changing the 'quiet splash' defoptions to 'nosplash' (just deleting these options will make them reappear after the next update-grub). I also deleted the 'splashimage' option.
Of course, with the next 'update-grub' my changes are gone, e.g. during a kernel update.

Revision history for this message
Benjamin Fogel (benjaminfogel) wrote :

Same problem here. SiS motherboard and a Radeon 9600. According to 'dmesg', my chipset is a "SIS962 that hid as a SIS503"

Revision history for this message
David Britton (dpb) wrote :

I believe this breaks because the symlink for the background image goes outside of the /boot area (which for some users is its own file system -- including me).

The menu.lst is set to read (by default, hd partition would vary by user, and hopefully is modified by update-grub??)

  (hd0,0)/grub/default-splash.xpm.gz

Which is in turn symlinked (eventually) to:

  /usr/share/pixmaps/grub/ubuntu-artwork.xpm.gz

This can't happen because grub only has access to one partition at a time, especially when traversing a symlink! I suggest making update-grub copy whatever artwork ubuntu wants into:

  /boot/grub/splashimages

then you can symlink at will from there.

Revision history for this message
Oren_B (oren.barnea) wrote :

OK, I took the plunge and tried to fix it with the instructions David gave at ubuntuforums.org - it worked great. My /grub directory indeed has its own partition, Ming's suggestion was right, I just needed someone to tell me the exact commands :) Thanks guys.

Revision history for this message
Andreas Simon (andreas-w-simon) wrote :

Yes, after copying the GRUB image to the /boot partition everything worked fine.

The requirement that the image must be on the /boot partition probably means that GRUB can't use the update-alternatives mechanism, because that will introduce an indirection through /etc/alternatives and thus won't work.

Changed in grub:
status: Unconfirmed → Confirmed
Revision history for this message
Michael Vogt (mvo) wrote :

Thanks everyone for testing this feature and for those detailed reports.

We decided to disable this feature again for dapper and we'll re-enable it for dapper+1. Then without the alternatives system and better graphics.

Please just remove the
"splashimage="
 line in your
"/boot/grub/menu.lst"
 to get rid of the image, it won't be added again (during dapper).

Cheers,
 Michael

Revision history for this message
Dave Brady (matter-grey) wrote :

I just want to comment that I hadn't noticed this bug, and reported a duplicate:
https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/grub/+bug/60043

That duplicate was the same bug occurring in Edgy, and has been fixed by using the solution in this thread.

Revision history for this message
Henrik Nilsen Omma (henrik) wrote :

No comment on this bug for over a year. Is anyone still having this problem on Gutsy or Hardy or can it be closed?

Revision history for this message
Oren_B (oren.barnea) wrote :

I'm using Gutsy and I don't have this problem.
Thanks for asking :)

Changed in grub:
status: Confirmed → Fix Released
Revision history for this message
Fernando (ferjcontreras) wrote :

I'm using gutsy with a VGA compatible controller: S3 Inc. VT8375 [ProSavage8 KM266/KL266] and I still have this problem. I had to change these lines on /boot/grub/menu.lst:

defoptions=quiet splash
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.22-14-generic root=UUID=839a578a-1072-4988-9fc2-3c089b63efab ro quiet splash

to

defoptions=nosplash
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.22-14-generic root=UUID=839a578a-1072-4988-9fc2-3c089b63efab ro nosplash

To post a comment you must log in.
This report contains Public information  
Everyone can see this information.

Duplicates of this bug

Other bug subscribers

Remote bug watches

Bug watches keep track of this bug in other bug trackers.