[Balug-talk] splash at boot

[Phillip.Watts at nlynx.com]

Thanks.
I can handle the lilo splash screen, I am only worried about
suppressing the init chatter and replacing it with a bmp or jpeg.

What was that you said about knoppix already having stuff in kernel
for something?  I am using the knoppix kernel and it boots like any other.
What kernel parameters are you referring to?
Thanks again.





star at starshine.org (Heather Stern) on 08/05/2003 12:25:43 PM

To:   Phillip Watts/austin/Nlynx at Nlynx
cc:   balug-talk at balug.org

Subject:  Re: [Balug-talk] splash at boot



On Tue, Aug 05, 2003 at 10:58:47AM -0500, Phillip.Watts at nlynx.com wrote:
>
>
> Anyone know how to put up a splash ( jpeg or bmp) at boot time.

Yes; I have done graphics for several of the boot loaders.  Not yet for
GRUB tho :)

> I am aware of bootsplash.org but they want to patch the kernel.
> Simpler way?

LILO accepts a splash screen, you have to be very careful with the
palette and do some other things.  The result is low resolution but
should work okay.

GRUB is capable of very high resolution; I've seen the RH9 splash that
goes into their grub menu and it looks slick.

Syslinux accepts a 16-color image with a tweaked palette.  The trick
that's worked best for me is
     create the image in gimp, save down to custom palette, xpm
     xpmtoppm <yoursaved.xpm >intermediate.ppm
     ppmtolss16 <intermediate.ppm >bootlogo.16
     tell syslinux about the file.
You have to be careful that color 7 is something readable.

> I'm replacing some dumbterminals at my company with thin clients
> and they don't want to see the dmesg and init stuff scroll.

Knoppix my man, Knoppix.  And yes, you will need to patch the kernel
to get a lot of that stuff to shut up.  That's true whether you put a
GUI splash up or not.  Klaus hacked his kernel for that already though,
and his insane taste in colors once there is something worth seeing are
actually values in the initscripts (/etc/init.d/*) so they can be
cleaned up if you have an opinion about magenta and green on the same
screen...

> As a partitial alternative, I can boot with quiet but I don't know
> how to suppress init's chatter to the console.

Frankly I hadn't gotten around to reading Klaus' diff yet.  He hacks
init too, not least so it will spit out the CD at the end of a day.

> What I would really like is a nice comforting picture instead of any
> chatter with a hotkey option to get the chatter.

Urgh, I dunno how to do that.  Yet, anyway.  I've been hacking a bit on
Knoppix lately.


  . | .   Heather Stern                  |         star at starshine.org
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