AW: [Etherboot-developers] Splashimage / Bootlogo

[devzero <de...@we...>]

Hello developers, 
many thanks for putting effort in this feature.
I also think, that ken's approach by moving menu-code "extern" is good.

Since tftp'ing is relatively slow and most boot/splashscreens are not 
very complex graphics, i'd like to append, that boot/splashcreen-images
should/could be compressed. 

maybe, grub gives some hints here:
http://hints.linuxfromscratch.org/hints/grub-howto.txt
http://linuxfromscratch.org/~gerard/
http://mail.gnu.org/pipermail/bug-grub/2002-March/006808.html
http://rpmfind.net/linux/RPM/PLD/dists/ra/PLD/i386/PLD/RPMS/grub-0.91-6.i386.html
 
Actually, using gzipped xpm`s as bootlogo in GRUB works.
regards
Roland

PS:
i have attached a (btw very nice!) sample xpm, which is ~8K compressed
and ~300K uncompressed - just to see, what`s possible.


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Mail from Ken Yap
>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).
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mail from Anselm Martin Hoffmeister
> >i'm looking for an option in etherboot that i can have
> > splashscreen/bootlogo when booting from the net.

Now it is, provided you can make your kernel boot completely without text 
output. The only kernel nbi I have here insists on putting a string like 
"Uncompressing kernel..." on the screen and complaining about my pci 
subsystem although I supplied "quiet" as command line option. No matter, if 
you can have a silent boot, an image can be displayed which will last until 
the first process writes to console.

> If you were a coder you could work on the chaining facikity that allows
> Etherboot to download a intermediate program which can display whatever
> it wants and then specify which image to load next and return to
> Etherboot. See mknbi-menu from the mknbi package.

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
and put an ansi graphics file so that tftp can reach it as /splash.ans
In that tar gz file, there is an example. If you want to disable it, just put 
a zero-size file to the same location as splash.ans (e.g. "rm splash.ans; 
touch splash.ans") or disable the -DSILENTFORSPLASH option in your config 
file.
Please tell me if it really works, as I said before, I cannot make my kernel 
really shut up.
BTW: I implemented this starting from a bare etherboot 5.0.6.
BTW2: Image size is still too much. This should become much better with a 
multicast downloading option. In development.


Documentation:
-DSILENTFORSPLASH
This option disables any etherboot-side output beginning at the moment the 
kernel download is started. Instead, it loads the file '/splash.ans' (from 
the same location it would load a kernel '/vmlinuz') and displays its 
contents. This option requires -DANSIESC and -DGFX to work properly.

Anselm