Because of vision problems, I have trouble reading the messages displayed during system boot AFTER grub has started the actual bootstrap. The OS is Debian (Mepis), which uses cyan text on dark-gray background. Can anyone tell me where the color style is configured so I can change to a higher contrast combination?
I have tried changing colors with the color command in menu.lst, but to no avail. The grub manual implies that the colors specified apply only to the boot menu (makes sense!).
Is it possible that there is a command that can be appended to the kernal loading command in the grub menu?
tia
Al

the color must be specified somewhere in the boot scripts
the command will look something like
^[H^[J^[32;1m
or like
\\033[1;32m
^[ = \033
that's green
\033[0m is back to white
the colors basics are
30 black foreground
31 red foreground
32 green foreground
33 brown foreground
34 blue foreground
35 magenta (purple) foreground
36 cyan (light blue) foreground
37 gray foreground

40 black background
41 red background
42 green background
43 brown background
44 blue background
45 magenta background
46 cyan background
47 white background
; combines cammands
bold which is really just lighter is 1
try from the command line
echo -e "\033[45;37;1mGrey on purple.\033[0m"
to see what i mean

there are most likely also ways to make text on the terminal larger using framebuffer or
SVGATextMode i'm not sure
http://lfs.osuosl.org/hints/download...gatextmode.txt
http://www.linuxforums.org/tutorials...rial-3523.html
more often than not these tutorials are about making the text smaller but there might be room in the other direction
it's worth a try

Thanks very much.. it's been years since I looked at this level of the programs. In the grum menu there is an initrc item. I assume that is the boot scripts that you reference. I'll see what I can find there.
When using Synaptic (or APT..etc) installation progress and interaction occur in a terminal window; the text is so small there that I have to use a magnifying glass to read and respond (intelligently, I hope!). That's another search!

you can set the font and it's size for x terminal emulators
in a file in your home directory ~/.Xresources
just make it if there is not one and put in it something like (for whatever terinal emulator you use)
rxvt*font: *courier-bold-r-*-34-*-*
now the big font effects the size of the window so make it small to startout so it's not off thescreen
so also put
rxvt*geometry: 40x10
and adjust up from there

this file will be automatically read in when you start x but to test use the command
xrdb .Xresources
you can do this for emacs and all the terminal emulators

as for the boot scripts it all starts with
/etc/inittab
mine has a line in it
si::sysinit:/etc/rc.d/init.d/rc sysinit
and in /etc/rc.d/init.d/ there is a file called rc that calls the others
and files get read in from there so just start at the begining of the script trail and hunt for what to change
wish i knew more

Thanks, I needed that! It's been 6 or 7 years since I looked at this part of the system and I very quickly found that the initrd in the grub menu setup was not a script and I couldn't think of the ones you mentioned. I wonder if I should query Warren of MEPIS 90r one of his team) and get pointed to where they set up the font and color scheme. You have indeed been a help. Wish I could work as fast! Al