I am using OpenSUSE 10.2.

Most of the time when I boot my computer, the graphical GRUB boot menu is perfectly normal. On occasion, the default background is replaced by an icy scene with penguins walking around.

Why?

I noticed that on at least one occasion, this followed a failed boot, but that doesn't always seem to be the case.

The dancing penguins is just an extra thing people from OpenSuse add. As far as I know this screen is used randomly and, to my knowledge, this has nothing to do with failed boots.

wow! Thank God . . . . it wasn't just me going crazy then.
I've found it happen on occasion too . . . . never found out why though.

I love some of the weird little quirks linux has.

=]

Thanks motomon. I share tjyorkshire's sigh of relief.

It has to do with "boot message" do a google, I am sure you can find more!

fogcat

Indeed I did! I googled '"boot message" grub random' which gave up the following link

http://forums.suselinuxsupport.de/lo...hp/t46993.html

It seems I've seen something similar in the openSUSE site, but can't seem to find it right now.

Partway down is a nice set of instructions for changing the boot message. It took me awhile to get it, but when you unpack the cpio archive that is /boot/message you get a file (among others) called gfxboot.cfg. It's contents on my system are:

Apparently, if you change the -1 to a 0 you can shut this off. Presumably, setting it to 1 gives you the penguin splash all the time.

Correct -