Enabling a quite boot with color-coded error messages in Debian

[Petter Reinholdtsen]

I realized yesterday, while talking with someone on IRC, that it is
not widely known how to change the appearance of the Debian boot to
enable color coding of boot messages and reduce the amount of messages
printed on the screen.  Here is a short summary for those interested.

First of all, change VERBOSE=yes to VERBOSE=no in /etc/default/rcS.
This get rid of some messages from the boot scripts.

Next, add 'quiet' as a kernel option in /boot/grub/menu.cfg.  This
tell the kernel and initramfs to be more quiet on the console.

Last, install the usplash package.  This enable color coding of the
boot messages.  You do not have to enable the splash support to get
the color coding.  If you do want to enable the splash support, I
recommend installing some other splash image, for example the one in
debian-edu-artwork-usplash.  To enable the splash support add 'splash'
as a kernel option in /boot/grub/menu.cfg.

Friendly,
-- 
Petter Reinholdtsen