Sometimes I want to do something (for example, playing a simple text-mode game) while the system is booting up. This is especially useful when lengthy reiserfs transaction replays are happening.

Current hacky way of doing it is:

1. Put the program on initramfs.
2. Before running /sbin/init, "openvt 2 /my/program".
3. Turn off messages from kernel (sysrq 0)
4. Override /dev/console with /dev/null (to prevent boot messages).

The problems are:

1. There are STILL some messages interfering with program output.
2. I can't see boot messages by switching to that virtual terminal back.
3. After finishing the boot sequence, /dev/tty2 ends up being attached both to getty and my program.

How to do it properly without of running graphical splashes?

The system is Linux Debian Squeeze, no dependency based sysv scripts.