The PackageKit offline-updates plugin[1] gets launched at boot and sends progress and text information to plymouth as it updates the system.

Using "plymouthd --tty=/dev/tty --debug" and running the updates plugin in the session it works flawlessly, but using the actual system plymouth at startup fails. If you press [esc] and then [esc] again the label shows in the correct place *most* of the time.

If you want to do an offline update manually, you can do this:

$ pkcon get-updates
(choose an update, e.g. waf)
$ pkcon update --only-download waf

Then click the "Install updates and restart" in the user menu. Boot will continue as normal (the two-step will fill from 0 to ~60% like normal) and then you'll see the fedora silhouette drop back to 0% and fill to 100% and then the system will restart. Then it calls back to 0% you're supposed to get a message telling you that the system is updating and when it gets to 100% you're supposed to see a message indicating the system is about to shutdown.

You'll need to have at least these package versions to make offline-updates work correctly: rpm-4.10.1-1.fc18, yum-3.4.3-44.fc18, PackageKit-0.8.4-3.fc18

Incidentally, I've tried getting a debug log both with plymouth.debug and plymouth.debug=file:/sysroot/var/log/plymouth2.log but this does not write any files to disk. I can however see the plymouth logs streaming past the screen.

I've been testing plymouth-0.8.7-1.fc18, but I'm happy to test any other versions or random patches. This is Intel hardware if that matters anymore.

Thanks,

Richard.

[1] https://gitorious.org/packagekit/packagekit/blobs/master/contrib/systemd-updates/pk-offline-update.c