mouse cursor(gpm) overwrites bootsplash image during[SOLVED]

[valmar]

Good day everyone!

I am trying to find a way to fix this problem. During the shutdown and reboot sequence, the console mouse (gpm) cursor writes over the console background bootsplash image, leaving a snale-like trail of black squares. Is there a way to avoid it? The most obvious seems to be to modify the init script for the reboot sequence to have gpm turned off as the first step. Hoever, while I know how to edit the init script for customizable runlevels, I don't know how to do it for the shutdown sequence. Can anyone help, please?

Thank you in advance!

Valerio

[carl.anderson]

You might be able to add this to your /etc/conf.d/local.start and /etc/conf.d/local/stop files:

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/etc/init.d/gpm start

and

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/etc/init.d/gpm stop

respectively.

I believe that the local service is run last on startup and first on shutdown.

[edit]Corrected a braino - originally typed gdm instead of gpm.[/edit]

[valmar]

Thank you! I'll have again access to my machine in 2 days and I'll try that out! I'll let you know if it worked! Thank you again!

[valmar]

Hello all! Here I am! I tried the above solution. First of all, I think you mean /etc/init.d/*gpm* and not *gdm*, right? However, it's still not turned off fast enough and the framebuffer splash gets overwritten, even if only for a few seconds! Thank you anyway!

[carl.anderson]

I've been thinking about it, and I suspect I know the reason there is still time to corrupt your splash before gpm shuts down. I noticed on my system that local starts second-to-last... splash is started last. So it seems that on shutdown splash should be stopped before local... thus the delay.

You have a couple options. You could try to manipulate the rc-script order so that local is last and first. You could also explicitly kill gpm sometime before any of the normal rc services are stopped.

Looking at /etc/init.d/splash, it doesn't look like there is already a stop() routine; so it should be safe to add this

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stop () {
        rc-status -a | grep -v off | grep -q gpm && /etc/init.d/gpm stop
}

This is a shot in the dark too, since I'm still not certain that splash is REALLY the one being run before local.

Alternatively, you could delete this method from the splash init script:

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# run after local so that the boot time splash image
# is visible for as long as possible
depend() {
        need local
}

You should at least try removing the depend routine and see if the startup appearance is acceptable. Hope you can find something that works.

[carl.anderson]

Why are you rebooting? That's not what linux is made for!

[valmar]

Why are you rebooting? That's not what linux is made for!

That is the funniest thing I have ever heard!

Thank you for your help! Actually my idea was exactly that, changing the order in the rc script. However, I don't know how to do it? Is there a direct way to do it? Or are the method you suggested exactly doing that? I am no newbie but my knowledge of Linux isn't so deep either!!!

Thank you again in advance!

Valerio

PS. I also just noticed that my /etc/init.d/splash start does not contain the stop method. Also, how can you tell which script is executed first?

[carl.anderson]

By default, the local script is started last and stopped first, unless some other script explicitly depends on it. By deleting the depend function in the splash script, you're basically allowing local to run last again.

I don't know of a way to examine the order of boot scripts other than to watch them. Perhaps this is a missing feature.

[valmar]

Please ignore the PS end of my preceding email. I figured it out. It seems that on my system local is the last service to be started. I put the gpm stop there as you suggested, but it's already too late. I tried with the other trick you suggested, but with no effect. It seems that the correct moment to stop the system would be the moment that X (or kdm) closes. Is there a way to execute something when X closes?

Thank you again

Valerio

[carl.anderson]

Check out:
/etc/X11/gdm/PostSession/Default

I think you can add the following BEFORE the exit 0

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/etc/init.d/gpm stop

.

If that doesn't work, it may be because the user is not root. You may have to do something with sudo to get it working.

[valmar]

I solved the problem!

I actually discovered that X is killed at an advanced stage of the reboot/shutdown procedure. So, stopping gpm after X didn't work. I noticed that as soon as /sbin/reboot or /sbin/halt were executed, the screen would switch to the shutdown bootsplash and the mouse problem would be present.

So, this is what I did, for future reference. In /usr/local/sbin, which in my PATH variable comes before /sbin, I created two wrappers for halt and reboot.

Wrapper for halt (called halt)

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#!/bin/bash

/bin/rc-status -a | grep -v stopped | grep -q gpm && /etc/init.d/gpm stop > /dev/null
/sbin/halt

wrapper for reboot (called reboot):

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#!/bin/bash

/bin/rc-status -a | grep -v stopped | grep -q gpm && /etc/init.d/gpm stop > /dev/null
/sbin/reboot

Please not that the syntax for the rc-status line was changed a little bit from the example posted here. (Thank you for posting it!!!!)

I then changed the permission to be able to execute the wrappers

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cd /usr/local/sbin
chmod +x reboot
chmod +x halt

Since I use KDM as login manager, I logged in to kde, went to the control center -> system administration -> login manager. Changed to administrator mode, went to the shutdown tab, and changed the halt and reboot commands to /usr/local/sbin halt and /usr/local/sbin/reboot

This way gpm is correctly killed before the shutdown splashscreen comes up. This happens both when I reboot from a console (the wrappers come first in the PATH) and when I reboot from X (kdm launches the wrappers to reboot).

During the boot sequence, I can start the gpm service in local.start as described above (or whenever I feel like, for all that matters)

This is not very elegant, but it works!!! If you have another better idea please let me know! Thank to all those who helped! I learned a lot thank to you!

Valerio

[carl.anderson]

Glad to hear you got it working the way you like. If you feel that your issue is resolved, please put [ Solved ] in the forum title.