Gensplash-How-to with progressbar!!!!!

Jakub · Posted: Sun Aug 29, 2004 4:55 pm Post subject:

Well, I got gensplash working on a second box with a nvidia card. I'm using gentoo-dev-sources-2.6.8-r3; I didn't like the fact that the splash appeared in the middle of the boot process so I removed the vesafb-tng patch from /usr/portage/distfiles/genpatches-2.6-8.50-base.tar.bz2. Then I applied the old-style vesafb-rrc-0.1.6-2.6.x.tar.bz2 patch to the installed kernel and ran vesa_modeline_gen.pl to select my monitor specs. Now the splash appears much earlier (although still a bit later than bootsplash I think but I can live with that). Btw, i used the 5 steps howto.

Here are the (possibly?) relevant options from my kernel config:

motub · Posted: Sun Aug 29, 2004 5:02 pm Post subject:

Off topic reply, from the Gentoo users mailing list:

Jakub · Posted: Sun Aug 29, 2004 5:11 pm Post subject:

rush_ad · Posted: Sun Aug 29, 2004 5:57 pm Post subject:

how do i get gensplsah themes?

Paranoid · Posted: Sun Aug 29, 2004 6:20 pm Post subject:

Jakub,

Thanks for the little clarification on the init.d/splash. It indeed does set the gensplash on the other consoles and you can modify things with the conf.d/splash config file too. Sorry motub, was wrong about that too (I think I must have a couple beers too many :wink:

). Might look at the script though because it turns off the gensplash on console 0 breifly when it runs.

I hear what you are saying about the delay. I tried using the regular vesafb but can't get 24bpp working, 16 works fine though. I wanted the higher res picture but the theme also includes a 256 color pic that doesn't look too bad so I think I'm going to try that. My problem is I'm not sure how to specify splash to use the 256 color pic. Looking at the theme file it has a pic and a pic256 section specifying the proper images. So how the hell do you pass on the info? I'm assuming in your grub.conf. I guess I'm going to try splash=verbose256, theme:emergence first then go from there. Any ideas?

EDIT:That doesn't work. I tried just changing the theme file to point to the 256 color pic as default with bizarre results. Why am I screwing around with damn thing again anyway?!? Christ, the only time I reboot is when I recompile a new kernel and I only shut my machine down once a month to suck all the damn cat hair out of fans. :evil:

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dalcorta · n00b Joined: 01 Nov 2003 Posts: 36

I merged the splashutils and starting converting the bootsplash themes I had but I'm unable to make each terminal have it own theme. Also ¿what is the diffrence between pic and pic256 in the config of emergence, or silent and silent256?

Maximo · Posted: Sun Aug 29, 2004 9:22 pm Post subject:

I get this error message when trying to emerge splashutils-0.9_pre07:

motub · Posted: Sun Aug 29, 2004 11:03 pm Post subject:

OK, its working now (under gentoo-dev-sources-2.6.8-r3). With the Lila theme, even.

What seems to have been much of the problem was that my /usr is on an LVM partition, so the advice from aslocum on page 3

Paranoid · Posted: Sun Aug 29, 2004 11:58 pm Post subject:

motub,

Glad you got it working. Takes 20 seconds to come up? About 5 seconds here and that annoys me. You might want to take a look at the splashutils docs which has info on compiling the initramfs into the kernel instead of using initrd. It seems to be a little faster (I went back to this way since I can't get the standard vesafb to work in the 24bpps mode).
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A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on.
William S. Burroughs

motub · Posted: Mon Aug 30, 2004 12:13 am Post subject:

OK, it's not really 20 seconds (I just rebooted, so I checked). It's more like 10, but the problem is that unlike bootsplash, the setting of the framebuffer and the setting of the silent splash is not simultaneous.

So I have 5 seconds of normal (giant) text, then the screen changes to framebuffer, then I have 5 seconds of that (cute tiny text), then suddenly I have a silent splash screen.

I think that it's the two very visible changeovers that make it seem so long and so noticeable. Bootsplash only flashed once to change to framebuffer which I maybe saw for a millisecond before it was obscured by the silent splash screen.
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(l)user · Guru Joined: 31 Jan 2004 Posts: 334 Location: Poland

Hi
I can't force this thing to work. Im getting this error sereval times at boot:

motub · Posted: Mon Aug 30, 2004 12:26 am Post subject:

Do you have /usr on a separate partiton than / ? If so, look 3 posts above yours for how I fixed this.
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ksuther · Posted: Mon Aug 30, 2004 1:47 am Post subject:

IT · Posted: Mon Aug 30, 2004 7:02 am Post subject:

I seem to have gotten all this to work just fine...

except

now, the command

(l)user · Guru Joined: 31 Jan 2004 Posts: 334 Location: Poland

cloc3 · Posted: Mon Aug 30, 2004 8:18 am Post subject:

sakus · n00b Joined: 28 Mar 2004 Posts: 54 Location: Finland

cloc3 · Posted: Mon Aug 30, 2004 12:58 pm Post subject:

georgz · Posted: Mon Aug 30, 2004 1:56 pm Post subject: no background image

Hi,

seems to half work for me. But during boot no image is shown, it just switches to a higher resolution in text mode... The splash for the consoles seems to work except that the jpeg image isn't shown. Tested with default theme and one other, always the same.

Any tip what it could be the problem?

I'm using nitro sources 2.6.8.1-nitro6.

Jakub · Posted: Mon Aug 30, 2004 3:47 pm Post subject:

What have I done!!! I've read the Gentoo-wiki fbsplash howto and it was really great but there were some inconsistencies in it (like, it said that fbsplash is another name for vesafb-tng). So i started to change some things but I'm afraid I've changed too much. The author encouraged people to make alterations but I don't know if I didn't go too far. And I'm not even an English native speaker... The howto is longer now and has more subsections so I hope if it has many mistakes it will not be that difficult to correct it.

I think that particularly the part about creating new themes should be modified (actually, I've only used the default theme so I have no idea if it works... :oops:

).

Paranoid · Posted: Mon Aug 30, 2004 5:52 pm Post subject:

I just read through the wiki-looks good to me.
_________________
A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on.
William S. Burroughs

motub · Posted: Mon Aug 30, 2004 6:03 pm Post subject:

Yes, I agree; thanks for expanding the information and making it even clearer. I had done my additions last night, and your edit clarified one thing that I had left a bit fuzzy because I wasn't too sure about it-- I knew that you needed to only make (and not install) the kernel before emerging splashutils, but I wasn't quite sure if you had to wait until after you'd made the initrd to install it. Your explanation of the two methods of creating the initrd straightened that out in my mind.

(Plus, you didn't edit me, much, so I'm fine with it

.)

I might swing by and fix a couple of minor typos, but it's clear and very helpful.

And I guess we should stop putting disclaimers on the end, since that is the point of a Wiki-- it's a community knowledge base project. So we probably shouldn't feel guilty about editing (it's just that I write, so I feel bad; there aren't many writers who like being edited

).
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Paranoid · Posted: Mon Aug 30, 2004 7:20 pm Post subject:

Here's a neat time saving trick if you are making a new theme:

When switching from X back to the console (ctl-alt-f1) the framebuffer is refreshed using the .cfg file located in /etc/splash/whateverthemeyouarecurrentlyusing. So you can change the colors, sizes, images etc. by just editing the .cfg file you are using (example:1024x768.cfg-might be prudent to make a backup b4 you start editing) and just do a ctl-alt-f1 to see your changes.

When you are all done make a new theme dir (just thought of this-if you are using theme:default which is symlinked to the appropriate dir you can just change the symlink to point to your new theme dir and not have to worry about screwing the current 1 up) and generate a new initramfs, ready to go with a new theme. You will be only able to do 1 size at a time and only 1 mode at a time (silent or verbose). I use verbose not silent so I can adjust everything. If you are using silent you won't be able to change around the progress bar and see the differences (I'm assuming, never used silent). Good luck.

EDIT:see doc/splashutils/theme_format file for an explanation of all the options.
_________________
A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on.
William S. Burroughs

dbasinge · Posted: Mon Aug 30, 2004 8:10 pm Post subject:

Got it working, I have a wide screen laptop, and I finally found a vga setting it liked.

Mike
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