Getting rid of the Ubuntu splash screen on a LTSP thin client

One of the problems with running Ubuntu thin clients is that, when things go wrong, the splash screen gets in the way. To turn off the splash screen for a specific thin client, do the following:

1) Acquire root on the LTSP server

2) cd to the directory which holds the boot config file

cd /var/lib/tftpboot/ltsp/i386/pxelinux.cfg

3) There should be a file called “default” there. Copy that file to one that starts with 01, followed by the MAC address of the target thin client (change the colons to dashes).

cp default 01–00–0c-29-e1-a2–55

4) Open the new file with your favorite editor. The contents should look something like the following:

default ltsp label ltsp kernel vmlinuz append ro initrd=initrd.img quiet splash nbdport=2000

5) From that last line, remove the words “quiet splash” and save the file.

6) Your thin client should now boot without the splash screen (no need to restart the server), allowing you to see where in the boot sequence it’s crashing.

Above is adapted from the 28 Aug 2008 entry in the bootpolish blog.