Is there a way to view the console output instead of boot logo, while my RHEL 6.2 machine boots up?

Question

My company provided laptop has RHEL6.2, with lot of programs to start up automatically, which makes the boot up process slow.

While the machine boots up, there is the boring RHEL logo on the screen for a long time.

Instead is there way to view the console, while my machine boots up? The console log would at least keep scrolling and won't be as monotonous! :)

Edit:

My laptop has LUKS disk encryption. So after grub screen, LUKS asks for the disk password and then the RHEL logo keeps rotating for a long time!

Answer 1

Check your /etc/default/grub file. You should see a line like:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="splash quiet"

Change that to :

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="nosplash" 

then, as root, run

update-grub

---

UPDATE: I just realized that RHEL6.2 uses grub instead of grub2. That is why you are missing the /etc/default/grub file. What you should do then, is edit /boot/grub/grub.cfg, look for the line that boots your kernel, it should be something like:

menuentry "GNU/Linux, Linux 3.6-lfs-SVN-20121002" {
    linux   /boot/vmlinuz-3.6-lfs-SVN-20121002 root=/dev/sda2 splash quiet
}

Change that to :

menuentry "GNU/Linux, Linux 3.6-lfs-SVN-20121002" {
    linux   /boot/vmlinuz-3.6-lfs-SVN-20121002 root=/dev/sda2 nosplash
}

Answer 2

Pressing Esc will switch between Plymouth and the console.