Arch Linux

kcarch

Member

Registered: 2025-03-10

Posts: 2

How to make "plymouth" to work with "archiso" ?

hi everyone

i followed the plymouth wiki and archiso wiki https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Plymouth but there is not much info regarding Archiso together with plymouth.

so need input from the experts.
if possible please try building an archiso images which has working plymouth boot animation and share with me the steps to achieve that.

i followed these steps

1. Git clone archiso https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/archiso.git

2. Add following packages in configs/releng/packages.x86_64

   breeze-plymouth
   plymouth

3. Add plymouth hook in configs/releng/airootfs/etc/mkinitcpio.conf.d/archiso.conhttps://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Plymouth#mkinitcpio

4. Add following code

   /etc/plymouth/plymouthd.conf
   
   [Daemon]
   Theme=breeze

5. Created user account as mentioned in https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Archis … _passwords

6. Added systemd service for delay https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Plymou … _animation

7. Finally built the iso https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Archiso#Build_the_ISO

But the problem is plymouth boot animation is not getting displayed

what am i doing wrong? what step did i missed?

also is this step necessary ?

plymouth-set-default-theme -R breeze

if yes then how to do it in archiso?

kcarch

Member

Registered: 2025-03-10

Posts: 2

Re: How to make "plymouth" to work with "archiso" ?

also is this step necessary ?

plymouth-set-default-theme -R breeze

if yes then how to do it in archiso?

i booted the built iso file. i get this error message when trying to run above command

==> Building image from preset: /etc/mkinitcpio.d/linux.preset: 'archiso'
==> Using configuration file: '/etc/mkinitcpio.conf.d/archiso.conf'
  -> -k /boot/vmlinuz-linux -c /etc/mkinitcpio.conf.d/archiso.conf -g /boot/initramfs-linux.img
==> ERROR: specified kernel image does not exist: '/boot/vmlinuz-linux'

i think this is because archiso deletes everything inside /boot directory

so i git cloned again and commented out this line
https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/ … heads#L155

which does not deletes everything inside /boot directory and rebuilt the iso file

Now everything inside /boot directory is present in the final iso image

plymouth-set-default-theme -R breeze-text

and above command runs succesfully and is able to regenerate initrd/initcpio

But running below commands

sudo plymouthd
sudo plymouth --show-splash

does not produce any output

what am i missing? is there some specific package that need to be installed?

even selecting default themes that come pre-packaged with "plymouth" like "tribar" does not produce any output.

CrazySpike

Member

Registered: 2025-09-09

Posts: 1

Re: How to make "plymouth" to work with "archiso" ?

As a troubleshooting method for now, add plymouth-set-default-theme -R breeze to /airootfs/root/custom_airootfs.sh, which will run the command as archiso is being built instead of running while it is booting for the first time. However, this is not a good long-term solution as custom_airootfs.sh is planned to be deprecated.

The following is the preferred method as it doesn't rely on /airootfs/root/custom_airootfs.sh:

For /airootfs/etc/mkinitcpio.conf.d/archiso.conf, make sure that the Plymouth hook is right after the base hook if not using systemd.

Not using systemd: HOOKS=(base plymouth ...). Using systemd: HOOKS=(base systemd plymouth ...).

For /airootfs/etc/plymouth/plymouthd.conf, try adding the following lines:

[Daemon]
Theme=breeze
ShowDelay=0
DeviceTimeout=5

Also, make sure to add quiet splash loglevel=3 rd.udev.log_priority=3 vt.global_cursor_default=0 to the following files:

grub/grub.cfg
grub/loopback.cfg
efiboot/loader/entries/01-archiso-x86_64-linux.conf
efiboot/loader/entries/02-archiso-x86_64-speech-linux.conf
efiboot/loader/entries/03-archiso-x86_64-memtest86+.conf

Lastly, I added the plymouth-quit.service and plymouth-start.service symbolic links under /airootfs/etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants regardless of whether I was using systemd or not, just in case.