[Splashy-devel] splashy initramfs support

[Luis M]

Hello Pat,

On 3/1/06, Pat Suwalski <pats at xandros.com> wrote:
> Luis M wrote:
> > But, why have splashy running if there is no video framebuffer? I
> > guess is better to check whether /dev/fb exists and if not exit
> > cleanly.
>
> Because as a distribution, it has to be on automatically. There can't be
> any mucking around with mkinitrd, none of our users know what it is or
> that it even exists. Whether it's loaded or not is nice to have
> determined at run time.
>

I'm with you in that. If the distribution comes preloaded with
splashy, like it is in your case and others, the message about missing
vga= in append= can lead to confusion. I'll add that ot the README and
remove the check from splashy.

> There is also the case where a boot menu option exists to not have the
> splash screen or any vga mode for that matter. Again, it's nice to not
> have to modify init scripts and mkinitrds and ISO boot scripts for this
> case.
>

Perhaps you misunderstood what I said in the previous email.
splashy-init, the init script that launches splashy (the binary), can
definitely print the progress to STDOUT (console) at boot. splashy,
the binary, will simply die silently when directfb can't open a valid
framebuffer (regardless of the driver used).

> It's not that the current method is bad, it's more that the current
> message is alarming/confusing.
>
> > The reason i added the /proc/cmdline warning was to help newbies get
> > splashy working by printing a hint to the terminal.
>
> I can understand the reason, but here's another one:
>
> If I have an i810 chip, which does not work with vesa_fb under any
> circumstances (needs video memory allocated/mapped) and I don't want to
> recompile the kernel, I can't specify vga= or else vesafb will always
> ask for a mode that works. The mode automatically changes when i810fb is
> loaded.
>
> OT: i810-fb really sucks. It needs agpgart, intel-agp, etc. 6 modules.
> Crazy.

Ok, got your point. I hope you mean "in a hypothetical situation,
because I use splashy with a i810 card (at work) and vesafb is the
only driver i use (compile-in, not as module, for a 2.6.15.x kernel).
In any case, i didn't know that the i810fb needed that much to work.

I know about a lot of people having problems with radeonfb ;-) I guess
that's a similar situation. But, at least vesafb works for most people
(if not all).


--
----)(-----
Luis Mondesi
System Administrator
Kiskeyix.org

"We think basically you watch television to turn your brain off, and
you work on your computer when you want to turn your brain on" --
Steve Jobs in an interview for MacWorld Magazine 2004-Feb

No .doc: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.es.html