Completely silent (or custom) boot for Linux appliance

Question

I am working on an appliance that runs on Linux (Ubuntu 10.04 for now) and x86-64 Intel based PC. I need to completely customize the boot screens - no BIOS messages, and either (a) no screen output until X is launched or (b) custom screen output via VESA/VBE.

(b) looks hard to achieve because none of the framebuffer drivers (vesafb, uvesafb) seem to support addressing pixels on more than 2 monitors being driven by the same graphics card

So, I'm looking at (a) : no output on screen until X is launched. This should mean no Dell BIOS output, no Ubuntu splash screen, no console output.

Any ideas will be much appreciated.

Answer 1

I don't know much about the framebuffer stuff, but I can tell you for sure that you'll have no control over the BIOS output from Linux.

In the boot process, BIOS comes first, then the boot loader, then Linux. So when Linux appears, the BIOS stuff is done for long.