HOWTO: Change the boot logo/screen

eadz · Posted: Wed Nov 13, 2002 2:06 am

The boot logo is a file called logo.16
It is in the boot.img. To view the boot.img : ( as root )

Code:

cp /cdrom/KNOPPIX/boot.img /tmp/
mkdir /mnt/bootimg
mount -o loop /tmp/boot.img /mnt/bootimg

Now, in /tmp/bootimg you should have :
boot.msg f1 ldlinux.sys logo.16 miniroot.gz syslinux.cfg vmlinuz

these files are for Syslinux and you should read the docs there about the display format ( relating to the f1 file and others )

the logo.16 file is a lss16 format image.
you should have the program ppmtolss16 , which turns a ppm image into a lss16 format image suitable for booting.

The image must be less than 640x480 or less. 640x400 leaves room at the bottom for the boot prompt.

It also must be 16 colors.
use the programs giftopnm or pngtopnm to change your gif or png 16 color image into pnm format, then pnmtolss16, which you can put in /tmp/bootimg.

then you can

Code:

unmount /mnt/bootimg

and then use that boot image when making the ISO file for your CD

blase · Posted: Wed Jan 15, 2003 9:30 pm

Thanks for the howto, Eadz. I've just gone thru it myself and have some comments:

1 - Follow the steps above to get to logo.16. Then use lss16toppm exists to convert it. The command format is:

lss16toppm <logo.16 >logo16.ppm

2 - The Gimp loaded a ppm file fine.

3a - The Gimp apparently doesn't save ppms, and wants to make it a PNM if you tell it to detect format from the file extension .ppm

3b - The pnmtolss16 command isn't in the Knoppix install, and I also couldn't find it even mentioned on google. This led to a lot of wandering thru the weeds, trying to find a fast path between what The Gimp could save and lss16. Since I'm unfamiliar with lss16, pnm and ppm (and most of the other zillion formats found by grepping for 'to' or '2' in /usr/bin), and since some file formats are lossy, I don't know if I've picked wisely. I ended up going .bmp to .ppm via /usr/bin/bmptoppm then /usr/bin/ppmtolss16

3c - the command format for these is:

bmptoppm <logo16.bmp >logo16.ppm
ppmtolss16 <logo16.ppm >logo.16

I imagine something streamlined like

bmptoppm logo16.bmp | ppmtolss16 >logo.16

would work.

4. Now, I'm off to finish my iso build. I'll report back if my edited boot logo fails for some reason.

Last of all, there's a typo in the 2nd code block:

unmount /mnt/bootimg should be umount, without the 'n'

dvessey · Posted: Fri Jan 17, 2003 2:22 am

I just tried mounting the image to look around and I had to set the FS type as vfat, otherwise it gave me an error

Posted: Sat Jan 18, 2003 10:00 am

You can edit the text displayed on the botton of boot screen on the file "boot.msg" at the boot image. It's ASCII, using a 640x400 image you still have room for 4 lines of text.

Pasq · Posted: Mon May 05, 2003 2:44 pm

My logo.16 has 76 kb, and I connot save it into boot.img because it's too big. I had 16 colors bitmap and used bmptoppm and ppmtolss16. Can you help me? Do I have to minimalize the logo.16 ?

eadz · Posted: Tue May 06, 2003 1:12 am

Pasq wrote:

My logo.16 has 76 kb, and I connot save it into boot.img because it's too big. I had 16 colors bitmap and used bmptoppm and ppmtolss16. Can you help me? Do I have to minimalize the logo.16 ?

You will have to either remove some stuff from the boot.img, or make your image smaller, or use isolinux instead of syslinux.

Pasq · Posted: Tue May 06, 2003 5:54 pm

I understand that I cannot make biger file boot.img ?

krung · Posted: Thu May 15, 2003 11:12 am

is there a way to look at the logo.16 i made ?

because it reduces the colors to 16 colors i don't know whiche effect this has - and everytime burn a knoppix cd is to much work ..

thanks

martin krung

Ghandalfar · Posted: Thu May 15, 2003 1:27 pm

why don't you use vmware?

je · Posted: Wed Apr 28, 2004 10:17 pm

Here's another method to change the boot screen with fewer steps:

root@not a tty[home]# lss16toppm <logo.16 >logo16.ppm

(Now edit logo16.ppm in the Gimp, saving the file with the same name and extension.
The Gimp seems to save as pnm, but run ppmtolss16 anyway.)

root@not a tty[home]# ppmtolss16 <logo16.ppm >logo.16
/usr/bin/ppmtolss16: Input format error 1

(ppmtolss16 seems to detect the pnm error and produces a bmp for you instead.
Now can convert that to ppm)

root@not a tty[home]# ls
logo.16 logo16.bmp logo16.ppm

root@not a tty[home]# bmptoppm <logo16.bmp >logo16.ppm
bmptoppm: Windows BMP, 640x400x24
bmptoppm: WRITING PPM IMAGE

root@not a tty[home]# ppmtolss16 <logo16.ppm >logo.16
/usr/bin/ppmtolss16: Warning: color palette truncated (3994 colors ignored)
256000 pixels, 2560 bytes, (98.00% compression)

and there you have it.

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