Talk:HOWTO gensplash

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[edit] genkernel --bootsplash initrd

If you got the latest genkernel and 2.6.8-r1 gentoo-dev-sources... you can do this instead...

edit: it worked.... of course that only remakes the initrd... do all if you need the whole thing...

for custom themes do something like

genkernel --bootsplash=emergence initrd

[edit] Re: genkernel --menuconfig --bootsplash --bootsplash=emergence all

Your code will work if you don't want to use the gensplash utility. But bootsplash is no longer in development and the person(gentoo-developer Spock) who wrote most of the bootsplash kernel patches decided he don't want to write kernel patches any more. Instead he begun working on gensplash. The functionality of gensplash is at the moment simalar to that of bootsplash. In the future it will have more functionality, like XML based config files.

If you want to use gensplash(and thus the splashutils ebuild) you can't use the genkernel command to automatically update the config file of your bootloader. For that to work genkernel should be adapted to be able to use the splash_geninitramfs utility and make the adjustments to the config file of your bootloader. Besides the adjustments to the config file for bootsplash slightly differ to those needed for gensplash.

[edit] Other Kernels

How well does the gensplash system work with other kernels? I don't use gentoo-dev-sources on most of my machines as I often need the mm or ck kernels to get some of the weird hardware i have working. Also the ck-sources memory watermarking seems to offer a big performance/battery life increases on my laptop, as the kernel swaps much less often.

Has anyone tried an fbsplash with a ck-sources >=2.6.9 and were any kernel patches neccssarcary?

[edit] Multiple Themes ?

Has anyone tried to use multiple themes for different consoles ?

I tried it, but it doesn't seen to work. I set up the SPLASH_TTY_MAP Variable, I checked the /etc/init.d/splash script, which calls splash_utils and sets the configuration for every console ...

So, I am wondering, what exactly happens when I switch VCs and what tool makes use (or rather not) of the themes set by the splash init script?

If anybody could enlighten me, what's going wrong, I'd appreciate it.

[edit] Laptop with nvidia

Hi, I'm followed your tutorial and it works great on my desktop, on my laptop, however, with a nVidia gForce2Go card it seems as if it's only using 16bit color even though I have set it to 24, does anyone have any hints about this?

[edit] Consolefont service causes the silent screen to blank

When my system boots, the silent image turns black when init hits 'UTF-8' or 'user fonts', don't know exactly which one. Though the progress bar just keeps it's color. Hitting the F2 key and returning to the TTY where the silent image is shown 'fixes' it.

• Editing my grubconfig fixed it, by removing the tty:N setting.

NOTE: should be fixed in splashutils-1.1.9.4, splashutils-gentoo-0.1.8. Also see the Gensplash troubleshooting and Gentoo bugzilla #90410.

[edit] CONSOLE?

I HAVE to start the bootsplash in grub with ... kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.11 gentoo=nodevfs udev vga=0x317 video=vesa:ywrap,mtrr splash=silent CONSOLE=/dev/tty1 ...

In the newer version of splashutils you have to explicitly set CONSOLE boot option. For additional information see: cat /usr/portage/media-gfx/splashutils/splashutils-1.1.9.6-r1.ebuild |tail -n 19

[edit] PIO_FONT

I found that the problems some people have been having in the forums is that they removed consolefont from boot because of getting the error about PIO_FONT. This makes the framebuffer appear in only the first tty when removed. I just added mine back and set it to hide error messages. Could what I did cause any problems?

[edit] No images/pictures in initrd?

Hi, I cpio'ed / gunzip'ed the initramdisk created with splash_geninitramfs, since my theme isn't shown after loading the initramdisk. I found that /etc/splash/mytheme/myres.cfg is the only content of this archive. Is this a bug? If I put the jpeg-images into the fs and do a cpio&gzip again (same as done in splash_geninitramfs) I get a kernel panic on mounting my rootfs while loading the new initrd during booting. Anyone has similar trouble?

[edit] Re: No images/pictures in initrd?

yes, i have similiar problem with kernel panic. A compare showed, that my old initramfs file is arround 4MB, the new one only arround 1MB (generated with gensplash)

[edit] Re: Other kernels

I got it working with 2.6.12-ck3-r1... the 2.6.12 patch worked almost perfectly except for one file (include/linux/sysctl.h)

The problem (trying not to get too technical) is that Con Koliva added some sysctls, so the numbers don't match up. Still, after applying the patch (-p1), add

        KERN_FBSPLASH=71,       /* string: path to fbsplash helper */

as line 141 of include/linux/sysctl.h

I've been using this patch for 2 days now, and there has been no instability. In fact, IIRC, the sysctl numbers are completely arbitrary, so if it causes crashes, somewhere, soebody has hardcoded a sysctl number into the kernel, and that should be fixed.

--Dan Hirsch (TheQuux) 7/19/05 @ 8:35PM PST

[edit] Compute vga= video modes for fbsplash

Thanks to bdz in Gentoo forums, there seems to be a way to complete the video modes table and get the VESA modes for your own card. Simply run vbetest; it will list some video modes that your card recognizes. You can test the ones you're interrested in beforehand. Once you have selected a video mode, add 512 to it; the result will be the video mode that you should pass to the kernel. You can also convert the result into hexadecimal.

Rather chose a 16-bit mode (5:6:5). Let's use mode 353 from this listing; 353+512=865 or 0x361 in hexadecimal. Then pass vga=865 or vga=0x361 to your kernel and that's it.

Vince C.

[edit] splitting the article?

It would be nice if the article could be splitted, for example:

• installation
• converting bootsplash themes
• troubleshooting

That would be much cleaner... ph 18:41, 23 January 2006 (GMT)

It's fine the way it is. → Chèvredan∫ante ^{talk · contrib} 00:25, 1 March 2006 (GMT)

[edit] mtrr and ywrap?

I'm having some problems getting my resolution set correctly and I think it would help if the article had some relevant information on exactly what mtrr and ywarp are and what they should be set to. --Cyde Weys 23:44, 2 February 2006 (GMT)

Cyde, see Documentation/fb/vesafb.txt from your kernel sources. Regarding the ywrap option, we could state that it gives you a faster console (scrolling) on systems that support it (I guess most current systems do).

Regarding the comment on setting mtrr mode explicitly, I doubt it is true, could anyone point to to i.e. a forum post where this is discussed? I never needed to use it. Anyone comments on that? I consider removing that comment.. --Kraymer 00:28, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

The comment is true. If you don't specify the mtrr mode, it is not recognised as an option, defaults to mode 0 (no mtrr) and throws vesafb: unrecognized option mtrr (Check you /var/log/messages) Note that this does not prevent the framebuffer from functionning, just without mtrr... --HTS 04:14, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] /dev/tty1 not found with udev

When I updated my laptop to use only udev and removed the static version, gensplash would complain about a missing /dev/tty1 node.

This makes sense, since it's only created after udev is started, and after that gensplash would enter the silent mode.

I found a work-around for it - creating a static /dev/tty1. The only tricky part is, you need to reboot with a live-cd, because the node has to be created in the /dev/ dir without udev running, otherwise the newly created node will be deleted on the next reboot.

• Reboot using a (gentoo-)live cd
• mount the root-partition in /mnt/gentoo
• go to /mnt/gentoo/dev
  • this dir is probably empty except for the console and null devices when running in pure udev-mode
• mknod -m 660 tty1 c 4 1

Now gensplash should work again.

Maybe this is worth adding to the otherwise great wiki?

Chris Hogevonder

[edit] Splitting Boot Splash HOWTO Instructions

I think it would be very beneficial if the Boot Splash HOWTO was split into two seperate guides: 1) Boot Splash for manual configuration, and 2) Boot Splash for Genkernel users. This way it would keep the confusion down between the two methods and greatly increase readability. I do want to add that the Boot Splash HOWTO is a very nice article and I can see a great deal of work and though has gone into it - so thank you.

[edit] Problem with F2 key

I have working splash with silent mode (thanks to this howto). Bud I actualy detected one small problem. Every time I hit the F2 button screen goes to the first terminal in silent mode. I can be on other terminal or in X. And I it does it for every combination of keys (like Alt+F2 in Kde, Win+F2 etc.). Has anybody else come to this? Is there some workaround? Thanks a lot!

Solved with version 1.5.3.3.