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Re: Usermode splash screen/boot. what's the best approach?



website wrote:
Hello to all.
For now the main under developing project of bootsplash in userspace is usplash or ubuntusplash or miscrosplash. here is the main page: http://www.ubuntulinux.org/wiki/USplash

As you can see the main idea is:
The rough idea is to leave console messages on tty1, but switch to another Virtual Terminal (tty8) and then write directly to the framebuffer (/dev/fb0). On failure/exit, chvt is called to return the active terminal to tty1 and the user may switch at any time by pressing Alt+F1. X11 is started in the background on tty7, but not switched to. When GDM has loaded a chvt (change virtual terminal) to tty7 is made. In addition to avoiding this startup delay, the startup video mode is changed to match the mode X is running in, no Grub/boot loader screen is used; and smooth fades through black are used to cover mode changes. Second me, this kind of approach is not the better because there is no any support after bootsplash, tty[1-6] are still in black and white. So i say, why not do an X-like server (got from xorg) that is started by init at first time (S01x-like-server) and paints animations and background images on tty1 that reads from /dev/console to write outputs and hold compatibility with console programs?

I like the usplash idea better. Also handling output and such from start-up scripts can be handled LSB style, with wrapper functions in the init scripts. I don't like the idea of any kind of X server starting. I don't know why you see tty[1-6] in b/w as a problem. I see that as an advantage if you want to know what is going on. Then you can press alt-f8 to go back to graphics.

--
Matthew A. Nicholson
Matt-land.com



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