Boot Parameters with Debian

[Kerry Hoath]

Definitely wrong as you can pass options through grub, you'd need to read 
the
update-grub
manpage.

If you're not running grub you would know how to do it in lilo and would 
rerun the boot loader which would negate the below:

there would be no way for the kernel to know the root device or override it 
from the value stored in initrd which wouldn't be useful.

in grub you edit the line

# kopt=root=UUID=2735f8ef-3437-4c53-9402-50e54223f879 ro

but you don't uncomment it; you then run update-grub.
Note that if your kernels are inside the automagic kernel section and you 
don't run update-grub you will never see the new options take affect.

update-grub does the search and replace inside the automagic section to the 
rest of the files.

If you are not running grub then this doesn't apply.
Note that in your dmesg output there will be a command-line that says,
boot options=blah or similar to say what arguments actually got passed.

You could add your
vga=0x791
however note that there are other tools to configure the console if it is 
running on a frame buffer device and the existance of /dev/fb is not a 
giveaway.
there will be info in dmesg output to say whether framebuffer is in use.


There are utilities to change the screen mode after boot; svgatextmode and 
similar; the old vga= options I seem to recall are deprecated in newer 
kernels but can still work in certain circumstances.
Documentation in the kernel-doc-xxx package should help you decide what you 
need.

I don't use speakup and the console at this stage but will look into it when 
I do.
Regards, Kerry.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Steve Holmes" <steve at holmesgrown.com>
To: <speakup at braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Thursday, October 23, 2008 7:16 PM
Subject: Re: Boot Parameters with Debian


> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: RIPEMD160
>
> As a general comment, I got hardware speech to load early now by
> putting the modules in /etc/initramfs-tools/modules; this includes
> also, 'speakup_soft start=0'.  I can then switch freely between hard
> and soft speech at will after being logged in.  If someone wanted
> software speech early like this, they could include espeak and
> espeakup into the initrd but I think challenges would be faced with
> choosing ALSA devices and ensuring the volume on such a device is
> enabled to be heard.  That sounds like a lot to include in the initrd.
>
> I do have one question though; what about other boot time parameters
> like vga=...? Yes, I'm still trying to figure out why I can't seem to
> specify a different terminal type.  I was thinking with all this
> initrd stuff that such parmaters couldn't be passed thru lilo/grub
> anymore.  Maybe I'm wrong here but that's my observation so far.
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