Bug 765130

I ran into this.  It happened using grub1 with an install of Beta1 from the KDE live iso.  And it also happened using grub2 with an install of Beta1 from the DVD.

Both were 32 bit installs.

I did not know about control-f1.

My workaround was to change "splash=silent" to "splash=verbose" in the menu.lst (for grub1) or the grub.cfg (for grub2).

The symptoms:  The screen goes blank during boot, before asking for luks key.

Typing the key on the blank screen does not help.  Going to verbose mode allows the prompt for key and things work properly.

In my case, this was with an encrypted LVM.  I expect the same problem would occur with any prompt during the "initrd" stage.

Note that bug 760352 might be the same problem.

The blank screen is caused by the kernel command line. As indicated on the wiki-page for Plymouth (http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Plymouth), the black screen is caused by wrong kernel command lines at startup. 

It seems that with Plymouth now the default, the kernel command line is created after the packages have been created and therefore is incorrect. 

In order for plymouth to work, the command line should only contain "splash quiet". Using splash=verbose or splash=silent, will cause Plymouth to abort and a blank screen is produced. 

Please change the splash=...  to just splash and restart. This should resolve the issue with a black screen.

Changed the 'splash=whatever quiet' to just 'splash quiet' and there was no change.
I had to change it in /etc/grub2.cfg because changing it in /etc/sysconfig/bootloader does nothing (another bug).

I should clarify - despite changing to just 'splash quiet', I still had a blank screen at boot.

Jon, what graphics card do you have ?  Did you check the wikipage for more information ? I know that when using a NVidia card, that a vga=xxx parameter should be given to initialize the KMS correctly.

#2>Please change the splash=...  to just splash and restart.

That did not work for me.  But perhaps I would have to update to the factory package for that to work.  Or maybe it is because the system uses radeon graphics.

I went back to "splash=verbose" which at least works (gets me the luks prompt).

I have an NVidia card. I do not use the binary drivers, I use nouveau.
What vga param mode should I use ("ask" no longer works)?

Reading the comments again, I noticed that the only the grub2 default configuration files were changed ? 

Was the real grub2.cfg (located in /boot/grub2/grub.cfg) recreated after the change with the command grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg ??  I noticed that the file /etc/grub2.cfg was changed, but this one wouldn't have any effect unless the correct grub2 configuration was recreated.

If the above doesn't give a graphical boot splash (plymouth working), then the following kernel parameter should be added. 

video=1280x800 (or any other desired resolution; vga is deprecated with kernel 3.4+)

Of course a new grub configuration should be generated.

I tried the suggestions in comment 8. No luck. Yes, a new /etc/grub2.cfg is being made by me each time.

Question: if perl-bootloader updates /etc/default/grub (from /etc/sysconfig/bootloader), how does one go about changing things in /etc/sysconfig/bootloader and then running perl-bootloader (and, then, is running grub2-mkconfig still necessary?).

This should really all be *ONE* command that somebody can run, much like mkinitrd:

update-bootloader

should just "do" everything.

I meant to say I also tried replacing vga=blah with video=1024x768. No luck.

Grub2 doesn't use /etc/grub2.cfg while booting-up. The default place for the configuration file used by grub2 to display its menu is /boot/grub2/grub.cfg. Therefore I indicated the grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg   The file-path here should NOT be changed. 

Ok. Can you please perform the following steps (as root):

1. update Plymouth from the latest Factory
2. run plymouth-set-default-theme -R openSUSE    (This should also rebuild the mkinitrd)
3. run grub2-mkconfig -0 /boot/grub2/grub.cfg
4. Reboot and see if plymouth starts now


At this moment there are still developments on-going with regards to the grub2 integration into the distribution. The target is indeed that running grub2-mkconfig is no longer neeeded, but I don't know the status of this as that I am NOT the grub2 maintainer. 

Please indicate if there were any error messages during the above steps.

re: /etc/grub2.cfg -- the grub2 rpm installs /etc/grub2.cfg as a symlink to /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

Also, grub2-mkconfig uses "dash lowercase oh (-o)" not "dash zero (-0)"

However, I tried all of the above steps and .... no change.

Since systemd no longer collects boot messages in /var/log/boot.{log,msg,omsg} I can't tell you what plymouth would have said.

This is the linux entry line from /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

        linux   /vmlinuz-3.4.0-3-desktop root=/dev/mapper/cr_sda2   quiet splash video=1024x768


The complete entry is:


menuentry 'openSUSE, with Linux 3.4.0-3-desktop' --class opensuse --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os {
        load_video
        set gfxpayload=keep
        insmod gzio
        insmod part_msdos
        insmod ext2
        set root='(hd0,msdos1)'
        search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 62db6335-d5c9-4123-aa2f-0dbc5c3c169a
        echo    'Loading Linux 3.4.0-3-desktop ...'
        linux   /vmlinuz-3.4.0-3-desktop root=/dev/mapper/cr_sda2   quiet splash video=1024x768
        echo    'Loading initial ramdisk ...'
        initrd  /initrd-3.4.0-3-desktop
}
menuentry 'openSUSE, with Linux 3.4.0-3-desktop (recovery mode)' --class opensuse --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os {
        load_video
        set gfxpayload=keep
        insmod gzio
        insmod part_msdos
        insmod ext2
        set root='(hd0,msdos1)'
        search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 62db6335-d5c9-4123-aa2f-0dbc5c3c169a
        echo    'Loading Linux 3.4.0-3-desktop ...'
        linux   /vmlinuz-3.4.0-3-desktop root=/dev/mapper/cr_sda2 single 
        echo    'Loading initial ramdisk ...'
        initrd  /initrd-3.4.0-3-desktop
}

Let's go back to the very beginning, Can you paste the output of "rpm -qa | grep plymouth" ??  

Systemd is collecting the boot messages in it's own journal and they should also be in the /var/log/messages and dmesg. But I doubt if there is anything useful in those file.s

Seems to be working for me, now.
Can probably be closed.

User reported that the issue was resolved.