kern/143370: splash_txt ASCII splash screen module

[Antony Mawer]

On Thu, Jun 30, 2011 at 11:33 AM, jhell <jhell at dataix.net> wrote:
> Youve been running this in production... How often do these servers
> reboot ;¿ and is it to identify what is actually running on the machine
> so they are not confused with surrounding equipment ?
>
> Most admins that I know don't bother with things like splash screens on
> 'production' equipment because its irrelevant to the actual server
> usage and unneeded overhead since the actual boot messages prove much
> more useful than some random ascii or bmp/pcx.

They're embedded-style server systems at remote client sites, about
1200 of them. The splash module is just a visual "nicety" which is
displayed during startup - at least providing some feedback as to what
the system is doing. These are systems aimed at a non-tech audience,
so those "niceties" count.

The alternative to that was either standard kernel messages during
boot, or a silent boot, both of which tend to confuse the crap out of
non-tech end users.

-- Antony