# Question About R13



## iainnitro (Feb 21, 2022)

This is perhaps a silly question, however, last looked at FreeBSD in 2012 and of course have used it on Macintosh (MacOS) for quite a while.  I am currently running Arch Linux and want to take a look at FreeBSD again for the desktop.  I can’t seem to find any info on booting silently with a splash screen like Ubuntu starts up or PopOS and have accomplished this on Arch with SystemD -boot and Plymouth.  Is there a way to do this on FreeBSD!

Thanks in advance!
Michael


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## Alexander88207 (Feb 21, 2022)

Hello,



iainnitro said:


> I can’t seem to find any info on booting silently with a splash screen



Put 
	
	



```
boot_mute="YES"
```
 in /boot/loader.conf.


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## iainnitro (Feb 21, 2022)

Thanks.  To add a splash screen too?  Thanks so much for the help.


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## SirDice (Feb 21, 2022)

sc(4) used to have a splash screen that worked quite nicely, vt(4) should have _some_ splash screen capabilities but the documentation is scarce and the functionality limited (compared to the splash screen of sc(4)).  



			MateuszPiotrowski/ImproveVtSplashScreenSupport - FreeBSD Wiki
		


But loader(8) might have some tricks up its sleeve nowadays. With a graphics logo in the "beasty" menu, there may be other options available.


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## iainnitro (Feb 21, 2022)

SirDice thank you.  That gives me a couple of places to research.


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## Alexander88207 (Feb 21, 2022)

iainnitro said:


> Thanks.  To add a splash screen too?  Thanks so much for the help.


Yes this silence the boot and shows a grey FreeBSD logo.


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## grahamperrin@ (Feb 22, 2022)

What's the easiest way to visually mute the init(8) stage?

It's done by helloSystem, but I can't recall whether it's hacky. 

(I don't _want_ to mute it, but I'm curious.)


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## Geezer (Feb 22, 2022)

Many versions ago, I used to use splash screen. I liked it. You could make your own graphics.

More recently, I have used boot_mute, which works reasonably well, until something goes wrong during the boot process. And then you are totally blind.

Much as though I like a graphicy experience (if I am physically at the machine), I think it is better not visually suppression the boot process.


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## grahamperrin@ (Feb 22, 2022)

+1



Geezer said:


> … something goes wrong during the boot process. And then you are totally blind. …



Without editing any file, it's possible to be temporarily mute-free when you next attempt to boot.

Escape early (before the loader menu), then:

`unset boot_mute`
key Return or Enter.

There's an intention to make things more user-friendly in this area, but I don't have the bug report handy.


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## Alain De Vos (Feb 22, 2022)

A few parameters you can tune in loader.conf, adapt to your liking,

```
beastie_disable="NO"
loader_delay="30"  
autoboot_delay="60" 
verbose_loading="YES"
```


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## grahamperrin@ (Feb 22, 2022)

Also (somewhat opposite to what the opening poster wanted):

`boot_verbose="YES"`

<https://cgit.freebsd.org/src/tree/stand/common/help.common>


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