Hi,

I have gone through the menu in ubuntu 6.10 to see if I could disable the loading Ubuntu screen during boot up but can't seem to find it. Thought it would be under system->admin or preferences. I would really like to see the command line messages as it boots up. Anyone know?

Open and edit (as root) your /boot/grub/menu.lst file which is your bootloader configuration. The thing you're looking for, I think, is to disable the splash screen during boot; this is obtained by adding an option to the end of the kernel line(s) that says nosplash, or if there already exists the word splash, by changing it to say nosplash.

Before actually editing the file I suggest you boot your machine and when GRUB pops up, get to the menu (if it's not visible by default, press ESC), press e to edit the boot commands and add (or replace splash with) the word nosplash, then press b to boot and see if it's what you want. If it is, do the same trick for each kernel line in your /boot/grub/menu.lst you use (edits made in GRUB menu are reset when you reboot again, saving menu.lst makes them permanent).

An example: if one of your kernel lines in your /boot/grub/menu.lst looked like this at first:
you would change it so that it looked like this:
You'll need to do that for every kernel line (means for every boot entry) in that file, if you want it for all of your kernels, or if you just use one kernel it's sufficient to edit only that line. If and when you upgrade your kernel by installing a new one, you might have to change that kernel's line in the file because by default splash is enabled.

Hope you found this useful.

Thanks b0uncer - that did the trick thanks! I edited the file - and changed the default boot order while I was in there. Thanks again for your time!