Bye-bye beastie ...

Mike Jeays Mike.Jeays at rogers.com
Tue Sep 27 15:23:25 PDT 2005


On Tue, 2005-09-27 at 17:28, Kevin Kinsey wrote:
> Mike Jeays wrote:
> 
> >
> >As well as turning off the beastie, is there a way to suppress all the
> >dmesg and other output, so that the first thing to appear is the KDM or
> >GDM login screen?  When I show FreeBSD to people who have only seen
> >Windows before, their first reaction is how geeky all that text looks as
> >it rolls by.  They are turned off before I even get to the login
> >screen.  Most current Linuxes are 'better' in this respect.
> >
> >I realise it may make it harder to debug failed startups...
> >  
> >
> 
> We use a "splash" screen --- I forget where it's documented
> in the handbook/FAQ, but splash(4) has most of the 'GUI'
> details (pun intended).
> 
> Basically, as root:
>  $ echo splash_bmp_load="YES" >> /boot/loader.conf
>  $ echo bitmap_name="/boot/splash.bmp" >> /boot/loader.conf
> 
> This should cause "splash_bmp.ko" to be kldloaded at boot
> time.  The bitmap should be 320 x 200 x 8 colors (at least that's
> what works for us - probably related to console settings).  We use it
> as an opportunity to show the company logo.
> 
> It comes up after the "beastie menu" and the copyright info
> (and a couple of error looking notices ... we're on 6.0-BETA5
> in the office now, dunno if it's related ;-), basically, during
> the kernel device probe.
> 
> It will stay on as long as a key isn't pressed.   xdm "takes
> over" after the boot process (I assume gdm/kdm would, too)
> and so this is less "geeky" stuff to look at, I guess.  It can
> be a little confusing if you don't run an X based display
> manager --- it'll stay on and cover up the login: prompt
> on ttyv0, so a novice might well wonder "how long is this
> going to take" while your box sits patiently waiting for
> a login.
> 
> Note that this splash/bitmap also acts as a "screensaver" when
> you're in console, AFAICT. 
> 
> HTH,
> 
> Kevin Kinsey

Thanks very much - I will try it.



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