RE: Scaring the non-geeks (was Bootscreen)

RE: Scaring the non-geeks (was Bootscreen)

[Raphael Schmid]

> How do positive terms such as OK or YES scare people?
The problem is not necessarily the init scripts. Each
distributor can customise these quite easily. The problem
is (how I see it) divided into two parts:

	I. The kernel messages. (And yes, I do know
      about both, "quiet" and "console=/foo/bar)

	II. Both, using "quiet" or "console=/foo/bar",
      and customising the init scripts only leaves
      you with a blank, black screen. Now, you might
      argue how "classic" or "beatieful" black is.
      But it should be obvious this is an absolute
      matter of taste. A nice picture is far more
      appealing, and pleasing, and whatnot.

	- Raphael

Bootscreen suggestions that don't involve kernel modifications

[John Bradford]

> The problem is not necessarily the init scripts. Each
> distributor can customise these quite easily. The problem
> is (how I see it) divided into two parts:
> 
> 	I. The kernel messages. (And yes, I do know
>       about both, "quiet" and "console=/foo/bar)
> 
> 	II. Both, using "quiet" or "console=/foo/bar",
>       and customising the init scripts only leaves
>       you with a blank, black screen. Now, you might
>       argue how "classic" or "beatieful" black is.
>       But it should be obvious this is an absolute
>       matter of taste. A nice picture is far more
>       appealing, and pleasing, and whatnot.

I don't think it is appropriate to include graphical boot screen
capabilities in the kernel.  There are better ways to achieve what you
want to do:

* Verbose start-up messages on the console
Leave things how they are

* No start up messages on the console
Either use the quiet option, or re-direct the output to serial console
or another virtual terminal.

* Graphical boot screen
Do not have the VGA card configured as a console device at all.  Set
the console output to a serial port for debugging, if necessary.  Have
the bootloader configure the VGA card, and display the graphic.  Boot
in to X, and let X re-configure the VGA card at startup.

Where no console is available for diagnostic messages, the keyboard
LEDs could be lit up in sequence to indicate that the system is
booting.

John.

Re: Bootscreen suggestions that don't involve kernel modifications

[Stefan Reinauer]

* John Bradford <john@grabjohn.com> [030129 14:48]:
> I don't think it is appropriate to include graphical boot screen
> capabilities in the kernel.  There are better ways to achieve what you
> want to do:
> 
> * Verbose start-up messages on the console
> Leave things how they are

agreed 

> * No start up messages on the console
> Either use the quiet option, or re-direct the output to serial console
> or another virtual terminal.

> * Graphical boot screen
> Do not have the VGA card configured as a console device at all.  Set
> the console output to a serial port for debugging, if necessary.  Have
> the bootloader configure the VGA card, and display the graphic.  Boot
> in to X, and let X re-configure the VGA card at startup.

Some method to switch between verbose and non-verbose mode on the screen
interactively would be useful and it should not loose old messages. Not
have vga configured as console device kind of gives you a hard time
here. My bootsplash patch takes care of this by only "hiding" the text
instead of not redirect it to vga, so the text buffers are valid all the
time and visible as soon as you switch them on

Stefan
  
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