How to create a custom bootscreen for use with lilo:

For that special touch that says: I use this interface often enough for me to make it look nice for myself.

First off, thank you Debian for a fine example of lilo's graphical bootscreen ability.
Much of the information in this HOWTO was gleaned from "man lilo.conf" .

Lilo can display a particular type of rudimentary graphic format as a backdrop for its boot menu.
The type: Bitmap (.bmp) 640 x 480 pixels x 256 colors (8 bits per pixel).

The Gimp can handle the creation of such an image.
  • obtain some image from the internet
  • resize to 640 x 480
  • change color mode to indexed - custom palette of 256 colors
  • create a field for lilo to print the boot options
  • add config lines to /etc/lilo.conf:
    ----- give lilo's boot menu and timer text colors(as indices into the bmp's color palette)
    ----- point lilo to that field's location in the image
    ----- position the boot countdown timer in the same manner

    This is the configuration that worked with my menu for trunks:
    # Jimbo custom trunks boot menu
bitmap=/home/jim/Bootscreen/trunks9-bootscreen2.bmp
bmp-colors=255,,0,139,,0
bmp-table=316p,455p,1,15,17
bmp-timer=254p,432p,255,0,0
    Now that the image is created and lilo.conf updated, we must run lilo as root to dump this payload right onto our MBR.

    root@pikkon:/home/jim# lilo
Added Linux
Added Linux2423 *
Added Linux264
Added Windows2k(hda1)
Added FreeBSD(hda3)
root@pikkon:/home/jim#
    Ah yea, if it didn't feel right like that then theres some error in your files somewhere...
    lilo will point you to it, the error messages are terse and appropriate.

    Now make sure to set your timeout for some reasonable enough time to allow the beauty of the custom bootscreen
    to really sink in... but not so long that its overly pretentious. 10 seconds is a reasonable counter time.
    Run lilo after making changes to the config file, as it'll dump new boot data into your MBR which must be correct at boot time.
    It will NOT overwrite your MBR contents when config or bitmap files have any errors, so fear not.