Grub:

Often when you boot linux you want to be able to watch the services as they start and by default in Redhat, Centos and Fedora this is hidden by a graphical bar that shows the progress.  There is a way to get rid of that progress bar and show the services when they start (or fail).

In grub you would do the following.

As the root user you would edit the file  /boot/grub/menu.lst

From the line that starts with kernel you need to remove the rhgb portion from the kernel boot parameters.  Make sure you only remove the rhgb portion or you may break the boot process.

Then reboot.  Make sure you boot the kernel that you just edited if you have more than one.

Note: If you dont see the boot menu then also change the portion of the menu.lst that says

hiddenmenu to be commented out.  Like the line below.

# hiddenmenu

Grub2:

If your running newer linux e.g fedora 16 then the boot loader is grub2.

Here’s how to make the grub2 boot loader verbose.

As the root user you need to open the /etc/default/grub file in a text editor, delete
“rhgb” from the line that begins “GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=”, these are the
parameters passed to your kernel when it is booted.

Then as root in a terminal run

grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg 

Then reboot and make sure you are booting from the kernel entry you edited.