Colourful boot messages

The functions used for the status messages upon boot are defined in /lib/lsb/init-functions and may be overwritten in /etc/lsb-base-logging.sh.

To add colours, in that init-functions file find the function log_use_fancy_output() and below the fi add the lines

…
else
    FANCYTTY=0
fi
# BEGIN --- colour definition
if [ -n "$TERM" ]; then
    NORMAL=`$TPUT sgr0`
    BOLD=`$TPUT bold`
    BLINK=`$TPUT blink`
    BLACK=`$TPUT setaf 0`
    RED=`$TPUT setaf 1`
    GREEN=`$TPUT setaf 2`
    YELLOW=`$TPUT setaf 3`
    BLUE=`$TPUT setaf 4`
    MAGENTA=`$TPUT setaf 5`
    CYAN=`$TPUT setaf 6`
    WHITE=`$TPUT setaf 7`
fi
# END --- colour definition
case "$FANCYTTY" in
    1|Y|yes|true)   true;;
    …

After that, edit the lsb-base-logging.sh and change e.g. the output of log_end_msg():

    …
    if [ "$COL" ] && [ -x "$TPUT" ]; then
        printf "\r"
        $TPUT hpa $COL
        if [ "$1" -eq 0 ]; then
            echo "${BOLD}${BLUE}[${GREEN} OK ${BLUE}]${NORMAL}"
        else
            echo "${BOLD}${BLUE}[${RED}fail${BLUE}]${NORMAL}"
        fi
    else
    …

Your next boot will look like this:

wiki.mbirth.de

All you never wanted to know

Colourful boot messages