Info
This manual page contains tables of
If the “value” field is non-empty, one of the possible
values must be appended to the corresponding boot option with a
= character. For example, if “1280x1024” is the desired
value for the boot option screen, enter
screen=1280x1024 into the Grub command line. For language
selection (here German), type lang=de. The Grub command
line can be accessed by pressing the e key
as soon as the Grub menu appears. After that, you are in edit mode. Now
you can navigate to the kernel line with the arrow keys and insert the
desired cheatcode(s) at the end. The space character serves as
separator. The boot process can be continued with the key combination
Ctrl+X or
F10.
Detailed reference list for kernel boot codes from kernel.org
These boot options apply only to the live DVD.
| boot option | value | description |
|---|---|---|
| blacklist | module_name | temporary deactivation of modules before udev becomes active |
| desktop | kde, gnome, fluxbox | select desktop environment |
| fromiso | Please read “booting ‘fromiso’”. | |
| hostname | myhostname | changes the network name (hostname) of the live CD system |
| lang | be, bg, cz, da, de, de_CH, el, en, en_AU, en_GB, en_IE, es, fr, fr_BE, ga, hr, hu, it, ja, nl, nl_BE, pl, pt (pt_BR), pt_PT, ro, ru, zh | sets the language preference, the basic localization settings
(locales), the keyboard layout (in the console and in X), the timezone,
and the Debian mirror. In the long form lang=ll_cc or
lang=ll-cc, “ll” refers to the language selection
and “cc” to the keyboard layout, mirror server, and time zone
selection (e.g. lang=fr-be ). The default setting for
English is en_US with UTC as the time zone and for German de with
Europe/Berlin as the time zone. Example for a self-selected setting:
lang=pt_PT tz=Pacific/Auckland |
| md5sum | tests the checksum of the CD/DVD (to check if CD/DVD is OK) | |
| noaptlang | prevents the installation of localization packages of the selected language | |
| nocpufreq | does not enable speedstep/powernow | |
| nodhcp | no DHCP (DHCP automatically tries to establish Ethernet connections) | |
| noeject | does not remove CD/DVD from drive | |
| nofstab | prevents writing a new fstab | |
| nointro | skips the output of index.html when starting the live
DVD/CD |
|
| nomodeset | radeon.modeset=0 | together with xmodule=vesa allows a clean boot to X for
Radeon cards in live mode |
| nonetwork | prevents automatic configuration of network interfaces at boot time | |
| noswap | no activation of the swap partition | |
| smouse | searches for serial mouse input devices using hwinfo | |
| tz | tz=Europe/Dublin | sets the time zone. If the bios or hardware clock is set to UTC,
utc=yes is specified. A list of all supported time zones
can be viewed by copying & pasting
file:///usr/share/zoneinfo/ into the browser. |
| toram | copies the DVD/CD into RAM and boots from the RAM copy |
Either the xandr or xmodule boot option
should also be used when applying boot options for the X graphics server
for Radeon, Intel, or MGA graphics cards.
| boot option | value | description |
|---|---|---|
| dpi | auto or DPI count | sets the desired pixels per inch for the monitor. The DPI is obtained by dividing the number of pixels of the monitor width by the diagonal (in inch) and multiplying the result by one of the following values: 1.25 for a 4:3 screen, 1.18 for a 16:10 screen, or 1.147 for a 16:9 screen. For a 24” screen with 1920x1080 resolution this results in 1.147x1920/24 dpi=92, or for a 15” screen with 1600x1200 resolution this results in 1.25x1600/15 dpi=133. |
| hsync | 80 | sets the horizontal frequency of the monitor (in kilohertz) |
| noml | prevents the X.org configuration from containing a list of modelines, thus causing the correct mode to be detected automatically | |
| noxrandr | prevents the new X.org drivers from using the extensions of RandR 1.2 and uses the old techniques to query monitor properties | |
| screen | 1280x1024 | sets custom resolution for X (1280x1024 or other screen resolutions) |
| vsync | (e.g.) 60 | sets the vertical frequency of the monitor (in hertz) |
| xdepth | values: 8 15 16 24 | set the color depth used by X.org (not all drivers support
1 and 4) |
| keytable | (e.g.) us, de, gb | keyboard layout used by X.org |
| xkbmodel | (e.g.) pc105 | keyboard type used by X.org (the number indicates the number of keys) |
| xkboptions | (e.g.) grp:alt_shift_toggle | assignment variant of the keyboard used by X.org |
| xkbvariant | (e.g.) nodeadkeys | set a layout variant of the keyboard |
| xmode | 800x600 | set the screen resolution according to the given value
(1024x768, 1600x1200 etc.) |
| xmodule or xdriver | ati, fbdev, i810, intel, mga, nouveau, radeon, savage, vesa | uses the selected X module |
| xrandr | forces X.org configuration using the new RandR 1.2 extensions of the X.org drivers | |
| xrate | XX | forces a preferred retry frequency for drivers supported by RandR
1.2. This option must be used in conjunction with the xmode
boot option. Detailed documentation can be found here. |
| xhrefresh | (e.g.) 75 | sets the horizontal frequency of the monitor for X (in kilohertz) |
| xvrefresh | (e.g.) 60 | sets the vertical frequency of the monitor for X (in hertz) |
| boot option | value | description |
|---|---|---|
| apm | off | disables Advanced Power Managment |
| 1, 3, 5 | (e.g.) 3 | boot targets or runlevels which can be entered manually in the Grub boot line. See also the manual page Runlevel - target unit. |
| irqpoll | uses IRQ polling | |
| mem | (e.g.) 128M, 1G | uses the specified memory size |
| noagp | no AGP support (Accelerated Graphics Port) | |
| noapic | no APIC query (Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller) | |
| nodma | no support for DMA (Direct Memory Access) | |
| noisapnpbios | does not perform an ISA “Plug and Play” query at startup | |
| nomce | disables the kernel option “Machine Check Exception” | |
| nosmp | does not use Symmetric Multi-Processor (multiple CPUs or CPUs with Hyper-Threading) | |
| pci | noacpi | no ACPI for PCI devices |
| quiet | no output on screen | |
| vga | normal | more about vga codes in the next paragraph |
| video | (e.g.) DVI-0:800x600 | for graphics cards with KMS enabled; applies to Intel and ATI
graphics cards (the latter with Radeon driver); DVI-X/LVDS-X refers to
video output shown by xrandr |
The following tables list the values that can be specified with the
general parameter vga.
An example of use is vga=791 (VESA code, resolution
1024x768 with 64000 colors).
Problems with netbooks or other screen resolutions can be solved by
entering vga=0 in the grub line.
Decimal
| colors | 640x480 | 800x600 | 1024x768 | 1280x1024 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 256 | 257 | 259 | 261 | 263 |
| 32k | 272 | 275 | 278 | 281 |
| 64k | 273 | 276 | 279 | 282 |
| 16M | 274 | 277 | 280 |
hexadecimal
| colors | 640x480 | 800x600 | 1024x768 | 1280x1024 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 256 | 0x101 | 0x103 | 0x105 | 0x107 |
| 32k | 0x110 | 0x113 | 0x116 | 0x119 |
| 64k | 0x111 | 0x114 | 0x117 | 0x11A |
| 16M | 0x112 | 0x115 | 0x118 |
VESA
| colors | 640x480 | 800x600 | 1024x768 | 1280x1024 | 1600x1200 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 256 | 769 | 771 | 773 | 775 | 796 |
| 32k | 784 | 787 | 790 | 793 | 797 |
| 64k | 785 | 788 | 791 | 794 | 798 |
| 16M | 786 | 789 | 792 | 795 |