Where did my Xmas penguins go?

sadiqdm · 12-22-2006, 06:02 AM

Bit of a horror!

When I installed 10.2, it had a cute animated bootsplash with snow and penguins. I had a X crash and did ctrl+alt+backspace and when it came back the penguins were gone, and I am back to the standard blue Suse bootsplash.

If anyone has time between last minute shopping and knows what happened, please help. It was proving to be a huge selling point for people I'm trying to convert from M$.

bigrigdriver · 12-22-2006, 06:23 AM

Your bootsplash is probably still there, but the configuration that called it has reverted to the default. Here is a link to a HOWTO to try to repair that situation.

http://wiki.suselinuxsupport.de/wikk...tSplashScreens

sadiqdm · 12-22-2006, 06:52 AM

Thanks. I'll try that.

onjoo · 12-22-2006, 08:32 AM

Actually if I understood correctly the xmas grub theme is something like a eastern egg. It will be shown almost randomly.

Micro420 · 12-22-2006, 11:49 AM

Yes, the penguins also have shown up randomly for me. Since my installation of SuSE 10.2 a few days ago, I have not seen them since.

stasik · 12-24-2006, 02:05 PM

u really miss them

on my pc they are random too.can i make somehow to see only penguins?or can i choose other animation??

sadiqdm · 12-24-2006, 02:05 PM

I still haven't found where they are hiding, but the penguins just came back again?

But more weirdness. In the /boot/grub folder is a succession of nested /boot & /boot/grub folders. Seems to be about 40+, all with the same time stamp, and contents. Every time I open one there's another inside like infinitely recursive Russian dolls!

xbennyboy · 12-24-2006, 02:58 PM

It is random. However it does increase in frequency as you near christmas. It is now appearing every time I boot up the computer.

m_shroom · 01-04-2007, 03:47 PM

I have yet to find out where they live on the boot screen

But they are living on and running around my desktop

Install "xpenguins" then you can have them when ever you want them..

Found in games, amusement every time you click on xpenguins you get 10 more

purevw · 01-05-2007, 04:11 AM

I found the solution. First, I realized that the penguins showed up more at CHristmas, so I changed my date. That brought them back so I could get my info.
To make them permanent, you have to open the file /boot/message with cpio. It's safer to copy it to an empty directory before you work with it. cpio is a command line only tool. Once "message" is extracted, edit the file "gfxboot.cfg" Just change the two instances of -1 to 100 so they are there 100% of the time.
Then just re-compress it with cpio and overwrite the original file. Figuring out how to use cpio was the only hard part because I am still somewhat of a newbie. But it wworked well for me and the penguins are back for good.

Jon Briggs · 01-08-2007, 09:53 AM

i quite liked the penguins when it was around christmas but they still popup now and again which annoys me if it isn't christmas. How do i set it so they only come on say from december 20th - december 31st?

sadiqdm · 12-24-2008, 05:46 PM

Decided to have the penguins permanent for December & January, so I had to learn how to use cpio. Not easy, as the info & man pages are comprehensive but not helpful!

Remember cpio must be run from the command line as root

After some experimentation I ended up with this Howto:

1. First make a new directory /boot/temp, and copy the message file into it from /boot.

2. Open a terminal as root and:

Code:

cd /boot/temp

3. Use cpio to extract the contents:

Code:

cpio -i < message

You will see something like this:

Code:

florence:/boot/temp # ls -l
total 1148
-rw-r--r-- 1   99   99 112353 Dec 24 11:01 16x16.fnt
-rw-r--r-- 1   99   99  61152 Dec 24 11:01 back.jpg
-rw-r--r-- 1   99   99   3093 Dec 24 11:01 en.hlp
-rw-r--r-- 1   99   99   1543 Dec 24 11:01 en.tr
-rw-r--r-- 1   99   99   3281 Dec 24 22:06 gfxboot.cfg
-rw-r--r-- 1   99   99  84289 Dec 24 11:01 init
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root      6 Dec 24 11:01 lang
-rw-r--r-- 1   99   99      3 Dec 24 11:01 languages
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 689152 Dec 24 22:08 message
-rw-r--r-- 1   99   99    229 Dec 24 11:01 pabout.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1   99   99  39431 Dec 24 11:01 panim.jpg
-rw-r--r-- 1   99   99  29857 Dec 24 11:01 panim_a.jpg
-rw-r--r-- 1   99   99  87451 Dec 24 11:01 pback.jpg
-rw-r--r-- 1   99   99   2124 Dec 24 11:01 phead.jpg
-rw-r--r-- 1   99   99   1719 Dec 24 11:01 timer_a.jpg
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root    312 Dec 24 11:01 translations.en

4. Open gfxboot.cfg with your favourite text editor & find these two lines near the top in the [base] section.

Code:

; penguin theme likelihood (in percent, -1 = auto)
penguin=-1

The animated penguin screen will appear at random with penguin=-1. You can set it to anything from 0 to 100. With penguin=0 they will never appear, and with penguin=100 they will be permanent.

5. At the bottom of the file find this section:

Code:

[boot]
; show welcome animation
welcome=0
; beep when menu is ready
beep=0

and change welcome=0 to welcome=1 if it isn't already. If you want a beep to indicate when the menu is loaded, set beep=1.

6. Once you save the file with the changes, you use cpio to re-archive it using this command string:

Code:

find . | cpio -o > message

This command makes a list of all the files in the current directory (/boot/temp) sends the list to cpio, and has it archive them to the file message.

Easy!

I've lost most of my command line skills, so it took several hours of reading the man & info files and then Googling for cpio+usage. Enjoy.

PS Is this worth making into a Sticky?

Larry Webb · 12-24-2008, 06:27 PM

It might be worth submitting as a tutorial. Just add Suse to your title.

sadiqdm · 01-05-2009, 05:52 PM

I've edited the original title, & the "Howto" post, and added tags to the first post. How do I submit this as a Tutorial? Can I do it through the feedback form?