Using update-alternatives to change plymouth theme only affects shutdown animation, startup is left unchanged

In Ubuntu 14.04, I was able to change my Plymouth Theme simply by going to /lib/plymouth/themes and copy my theme in there.

Then, by simply typing sudo update-alternatives --config default.plymouth (choosing the accordingly number of my theme) and sudo update-initramfs -u, I was able to change my Plymouth theme.

In Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, the folder /lib/plymouth/themes does not even exist.

By seraching in Nautilus, I was able to find the folder /usr/share/plymouth and place my theme under themes. Then, by typing in the shell the commands above, I was, theorically, able to change my Plymouth theme to my pre-copied one.

The truth is that, after changing the Plymouth theme to my own and after several reboots, no Plymouth theme is showed at boot. Just a black screen appears and then lightdm shows up and I login to my account...

I'm using burg as my default bootloader.

Solution 1:

I ran into a similar thing. After using synaptic to find the default plymouth theme, I hit properties to see what files were installed. That listed most files going into this directory

/usr/share/plymouth/themes

put all you files there then run

update-alternatives --install /usr/share/plymouth/themes/default.plymouth default.plymouth /usr/share/plymouth/themes/"path/to-your-plymouth.plymouth" 100

Solution 2:

These changes are read from the disk during shutdown, which is why that works.

On bootup, however, they are read from the initial in-memory file system image - initramfs, which you haven't updated with your changes. This is necessary because your regular file system isn't yet available.

Here's what I did to solve that in Ubuntu 14.04, so I can't guarantee it works for 16.04, but this command won't do any damage so it's worth a try.

If you run:

sudo update-initramfs -u

your changes will be put into place.