Re: [Etherboot-developers] Splashimage / Bootlogo

[<ke...@us...>]

>I just used ansiesc, which is inside etherboot.
>You can download the .diff file and an example ansi graphics file from
>  http://feldhausnetz.de/splash.tar.gz
>Then enable option -DSILENTFORSPLASH

I would prefer that effort was put into an external splash/menu program
instead of patching Etherboot. The stuff inside bootmenu.c and ansiesc.c
is ugly and hard to update as binaries are in boot ROMs.

Within a few days I will release mknbi-1.2.8pre1, which will contain an
external menu program that has the code that does the menuing in
Etherboot. In tests, the menu loaded instantly and all the initial text
were cleared off. When control is handed back to Etherboot you get more
loading messages, but in my opinion that's not to great a drawback. If
it's an issue, some sort of VT switching might be devised so that the
splash/logo remains on the screen. The main thing is a user-friendly
screen and with an external program you are free of size limits on
Etherboot, you have all of the lower 512kB if you wish.

So I will not be accepting this patch as it will be obsoleted or at
least be interfered with by developments on the external program.

Two things that won't work in the external program: the server and
gateway arguments in the image specs (which I think are of little use),
and nested TFTP files (which can be implemented instead by data in a
segment that accompanies the menu program).