Bye-bye beastie ...

Danny Pansters danny at ricin.com
Tue Sep 27 17:00:54 PDT 2005


On Tuesday 27 September 2005 21:28, 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

This is quite nice to hide all that "code" for normal? people, DesktopBSD uses 
it also, and likely PCBSD also. I've played with it now and then. For the 
non-fundamentalists: I'm sure you know that sunset image where you see 
Beastie sitting on a rock, it makes a nice splash. 

But I think what may be a problem is that the normal? people don't see any 
"progress" or rather movement then. Which may lead them to think that the 
system is stalled. It's my understanding that something like a "progress" bar 
like WinXP has (it doesn't need to show progress, just that something's going 
on behind the splash) would be very hard if not impossible to add. But 
perhaps it is or can be made possible to have a gif or a bitmap in which a 
partial clipping changes every second or so (some left-to-right-and-back 
moving thingie).

Dan



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