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#1 2004-12-02 22:45:39

phrakture
Arch Overlord
From: behind you
Registered: 2003-10-29
Posts: 7,879
Website

boot images: bootsplash v grub splashimage v lilo bitmap

I'm interested in the pros and cons here - I've only ever used bootsplash back in the 2.4 days and i could never get the loading bar thing to work

Ideally, I wouldn't want to patch anything - I like stock builds...
I want to know how each of these works...
I am assuming the bootloader images will not coverup the dmesg spam at the beginning... and I also heard grub supports only 14 colors (!?)... so wtf?

anyone have experience with all 3?

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#2 2004-12-03 17:01:47

aias
Member
Registered: 2004-06-28
Posts: 39

Re: boot images: bootsplash v grub splashimage v lilo bitmap

I think there are two different issues here:
- Grub splashimage is just that : an image in the background of the grub bootloader menu.  it really has nothing to do with the kernel.  so your assumption about not covering dmesg "spam" is correct.  it just makes it look less dull than having a black background with colors while you are making a choice
- don't know about lilo bitmap but I would assume the same kind of thing
- i have experience with bootsplash with SUSE linux.   I like it a lot (of course the progress bar was working perfectly  big_smile ).  I am going to try to patch the 2.6.9 kernel this weekend and get a bootsplash going (with the same config file as arch)  and make a package.  if I am successful, I could either let you know how I did it and somehow get the package over to you so you can have a bootsplash as well (prepackaged and all).  so let me know if you are interested.  I was going to ask someone from the TUR group to see if it would be possible to get the package posted.

as far as cons go, I don't really see any because you could always press F2 and it drops into the normal "spam" mode in case you need to trouble shoot the init process or something. 

pro: eye candy!  + ability to show windows and MacOSX users that Linux can be both functional and beautiful.

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#3 2004-12-03 17:16:52

i3839
Member
Registered: 2004-02-04
Posts: 1,185

Re: boot images: bootsplash v grub splashimage v lilo bitmap

Perhaps one of you is also interested in fbsplash.

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#4 2004-12-03 18:22:42

phrakture
Arch Overlord
From: behind you
Registered: 2003-10-29
Posts: 7,879
Website

Re: boot images: bootsplash v grub splashimage v lilo bitmap

i3839 wrote:

Perhaps one of you is also interested in fbsplash.

I don't really know if I understand the reason for bootsplash and fbsplash... yes they say they made the patch smaller so it could be easilly integrated into the kernel... but it hasn't been integrated into the kernel... so right now there's 2 different patch sets that both use the same userland utilities...

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#5 2004-12-03 19:02:59

aias
Member
Registered: 2004-06-28
Posts: 39

Re: boot images: bootsplash v grub splashimage v lilo bitmap

Thank you for the link.   I took a look at it.  right now it looks like there have been ports to debian and fedora core.  My concrens are similar to phrakture's.  fbsplash is not in the kernel and neither is bootsplash.  So there are on equal footing there.  I also like Spock's reason about moving as much stuff out of the kernel and into userland as possible and not having to fix bootsplash everytime a new kernel comes out.  However, I checked in the TUR and "splashutils" package is not available.  "bootsplash" and the corresponding init script changes are.   So at this point, I have a choice.  Either I just patch the kernel w/ bootsplash and go w/ the userland utils in TUR or patch the kernel w/ fbsplash *and* create pkgbuilds for "splashutils".  while the latter may or may not be difficult, it just seems like it is going to be easier to go w/ bootsplash for now.  If it works (or even if it doesn't) there is always time to experiment w/ gensplash later.
I of course welcome any counter arguments you might have.

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#6 2004-12-03 19:16:57

i3839
Member
Registered: 2004-02-04
Posts: 1,185

Re: boot images: bootsplash v grub splashimage v lilo bitmap

Using bootsplash seems a very unwise decision in the long-term, and it seems less stable/much scarier than fbsplash (jpeg decoder in kernel?!?).

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#7 2004-12-03 20:09:37

aias
Member
Registered: 2004-06-28
Posts: 39

Re: boot images: bootsplash v grub splashimage v lilo bitmap

Agreed.  However, I have never packaged anything using ABS (or any other package manager for that matter).  so i was going to take the easy way out for the short term atleast.  Plus, I didn't really want to tackle the porting of the init scripts from Gentoo process to Arch process (yet). 
I don't know about bootsplash being less stable than fbsplash, but I agree that having the decorder in the kernel is scary. 
oh well, no harm in trying to get fbsplash working I suppose.

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#8 2004-12-03 21:04:29

i3839
Member
Registered: 2004-02-04
Posts: 1,185

Re: boot images: bootsplash v grub splashimage v lilo bitmap

You don't have to make a package immediately, you can just compile the source manually instead. But as your goal seems to be to make a package for other to use, then you'll need to learn how to make pkgbuilds anyway. And that isn't that hard if compiling the package isn't hard, just a random example taken from the Arch website (following links and doing "view CVS"): "pkgbuild of file"

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