Silent boot

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This page is for those who prefer to limit the verbosity of their system to a strict minimum, either for aesthetics or other reasons. Following this guide will remove all text from the bootup process. Video demonstration

Kernel parameters

Change the kernel parameters using the configuration options of your boot loader, to include the following parameters:

quiet

Note: Add vga=current as a kernel argument that avoid weird behaviors like FS#32309. Keep in mind this will conflict with KMS so only use this argument if you are affected by said bug.

If you are still getting messages printed to the console, it may be dmesg sending you what it thinks are important messages. You can change the level at which these messages will be printed by using quiet loglevel=<level>, where <level> is any number between 0 and 7, where 0 is the most critical, and 7 is debug levels of printing.

quiet loglevel=3

Note that this only seems to work if both quiet and loglevel=<level> are both used, and they must be in that order (quiet first). The loglevel parameter will only change that which is printed to the console, the levels of dmesg itself will not be affected and will still be available through the journal as well as dmesg. For more information, see kernel parameters.

If you also want to stop systemd from printing its version number when booting, you should also append udev.log_level=3 to your kernel parameters. If systemd is used in an initramfs, append rd.udev.log_level=3 instead. See systemd-udevd.service(8) § KERNEL_COMMAND_LINE for details.

If you are using the systemd hook in the initramfs, you may get systemd messages during initramfs initialization. You can pass rd.systemd.show_status=false to disable them, or rd.systemd.show_status=auto to only suppress successful messages (so in case of errors you can still see them). Actually, auto is already passed to systemd.show_status=auto when quiet is used, however for some motive sometimes systemd inside initramfs does not get it. Below are the parameters that you need to pass to your kernel to get a completely clean boot with systemd in your initramfs:

 quiet loglevel=3 rd.systemd.show_status=auto rd.udev.log_level=3

Also touch ~/.hushlogin to remove the Last login message.

Remove console cursor blinking

The console cursor at boot keeps blinking if you follow these instructions. This can be solved by passing vt.global_cursor_default=0 to the kernel [1].

To recover the cursor in the TTY, run:

# setterm -cursor on >> /etc/issue

sysctl

To hide any kernel messages from the console, add or modify the kernel.printk line according to [2]:

/etc/sysctl.d/20-quiet-printk.conf

kernel.printk = 3 3 3 3

agetty

To hide agetty printed issue and "login:" prompt line from the console[3], create a drop-in snippet for getty@tty1.service.

/etc/systemd/system/getty@tty1.service.d/skip-prompt.conf

[Service]
ExecStart=
ExecStart=-/usr/bin/agetty --skip-login --nonewline --noissue --autologin username --noclear %I $TERM

startx

To hide startx messages, you could redirect its output to /dev/null, in your .bash_profile like so:

Note: Redirection is broken with rootless login. See Xorg#Session log redirection.

$ [[ $(fgconsole 2>/dev/null) == 1 ]] && exec startx -- vt1 &> /dev/null

fsck

To hide fsck messages during boot, let systemd check the root filesystem. For this, replace udev hook with systemd:

HOOKS=( base systemd fsck ...)

in /etc/mkinitcpio.conf and regenerate the initramfs.

Now edit systemd-fsck-root.service and systemd-fsck@.service:

# systemctl edit --full systemd-fsck-root.service
# systemctl edit --full systemd-fsck@.service

Configuring StandardOutput and StandardError like this:

(...)

[Service]
Type=oneshot
RemainAfterExit=yes
ExecStart=/usr/lib/systemd/systemd-fsck
StandardOutput=null
StandardError=journal+console
TimeoutSec=0

See [4] for more info on the options you can pass to systemd-fsck - you can change how often the service will check (or not) your filesystems.

Make GRUB silent

To hide GRUB welcome and boot messages, you may install unofficial grub-silent^AUR package.

After the installation, it is required to reinstall GRUB to necessary partition first.

Then, take an example as /etc/default/grub.silent, and make necessary changes to /etc/default/grub.

Below three lines are necessary:

GRUB_DEFAULT=0
GRUB_TIMEOUT=0
GRUB_RECORDFAIL_TIMEOUT=$GRUB_TIMEOUT

Note: If you set GRUB_TIMEOUT=0 and GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT=1 (or any positive value), set GRUB_RECORDFAIL_TIMEOUT=$GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT instead of GRUB_RECORDFAIL_TIMEOUT=$GRUB_TIMEOUT. Otherwise pressing Esc on boot to show GRUB menu will not work.

Lastly, regenerate grub.cfg file.

Retaining or disabling the vendor logo from BIOS

Modern UEFI systems display a vendor logo on boot until handing over control to the bootloader; e.g. Lenovo laptops display a bright red Lenovo logo. This vendor logo is typically blanked by the bootloader (if standard GRUB is used) or by the kernel.

To prevent the kernel from blanking the vendor logo, Linux 4.19 introduced a new configuration option FRAMEBUFFER_CONSOLE_DEFERRED_TAKEOVER that retains the contents of the framebuffer until text needs to be printed on the framebuffer console. As of November 2018 (Linux 4.19.1), the official Arch Linux kernels are compiled with CONFIG_FRAMEBUFFER_CONSOLE_DEFERRED_TAKEOVER=y.

When combined with a low loglevel (to prevent text from being printed), the vendor logo can be retained while the system is initialized. Note that GRUB in the standard configuration blanks the screen; consider using EFISTUB booting instead to boot directly into the kernel and thus leverage deferred takeover.

Video demonstration

The kernel command line should use loglevel=3 or rd.udev.log_level=3 as mentioned above. Note that if you often receive Core temperature above threshold, cpu clock throttled messages in the kernel log, you need to use log level 2 to silence these at boot time. Alternatively, if you compile your own kernel, adjust the log level of the message in arch/x86/kernel/cpu/mcheck/therm_throt.c.

If you use Intel graphics, see also Intel graphics#Fastboot.

Disabling deferred takeover

If the new behavior leads to issues, you can disable deferred takeover by using the fbcon=nodefer kernel parameter.