[Splashy-users] Re: Splashy 0.1.x and the future of bootsplashing

[Luis M]

On 3/20/06, Joey Hess <joeyh at debian.org> wrote:
> Luis M wrote:
> > In order to allow the framebuffer to be started by the kernel at boot,
> > vga=xxx is required. For 2.6.14 kernels and up, vesafb must be
> > compiled-in, not as module, so, this makes things simpler for people
> > who want an image at boot.
>
> Note that anything that requires prompting the user by default for
> obscure vga=xxx values[1] won't be enabled by default in the installer.

Ok.

> FWIW, the Debian installer already knows when a basic framebuffer can be
> used, since it uses this with bogl itself. It does this without vga
> parameters though, in the vast majority of cases.

Good to know. I wonder if this is similar to what splashy-init does:
test -z "$vga" &&
		  # Lilo (kernel docs) method
		  vga="$(silent -2 dd count=1 bs=2 skip=295165 if=/dev/mem |
		    silent -2 od -d - | head -n 1 | tr -s \  | cut -f 2 -d \ )"
		! silent test "$vga" -ge 769 -a "$vga" -le 799 &&
		  # Desperate detection
		  ! silent grep -E 'VESA|VGA' /proc/fb -q &&
			echo " - Kernel parameter vga= not set"

We could definitely add this to splashy itself and forget about
telling users to add vga=xxx to their kernel paramters.

When splashy is added to initramfs though, the modules are loaded for
you if we find vga= in cmdline (similar to what usplash does now). I
guess that code can be refined as well.

> [1] Or that requires guessing at them in any way that's more likely to
>     cause breakage than what we do now.

Thanks for your suggestions Joey. Will keep them in mind before
allowing Splashy to go into Sid.

--
----)(-----
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

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