Option to not clear screen after boot selection

[Tetja Rediske]

Hi,

with the recent addition of CONFIG_FRAMEBUFFER_CONSOLE_DEFERRED_TAKEOVER to the linux kernel it should be possible to boot with a nice Image from Firmware to Desktop. At the moment it looks for me like refind is clearing the banner Image after selecting an entry. Ofcourse i have set use_graphics_for and the Background color actually stays till sddm takes over. Would it be possible/feasible to add an option to not clear the banner?

Also thanks for the good work!

Kind Regards
Tetja

[Roderick W. Smith]

It'd be more than simply not clearing the image, unless you wanted rEFInd's icons and text to remain on the screen, but in principle, yes, it should be do-able. (My initial thought is that adding an option to display an arbitrary image would be best. This option could point to the banner image you're using or to something else.) I don't know if that would play well with the Linux kernel option you mention, though. This is a low priority for me personally, but my guess is it should be fairly easy to do, so I may give it a shot -- but I make no promises on that.

[Tibor Sipos]

QUite old topic, but...
I am trying to create a more-or-less continuous boot experience with rEFInd and Plymouth.
I had to fight with the buggy HP NTFS driver issue and other framebuffer issues, but it works now.

Except that rEFInd clears the screen and sets it to black after I select a boot entry (Gentoo Linux).
The kernel has deferred takeover, I use banner=xxxx for the image (which is displayed properly, however it flickers 3 times), textonly is not enabled, resolution is my maximum 1920x1080, and use_graphics_for is set to all values listed in the config. It definitely includes "osx,windows,linux".

Still, right after I select an entry to boot, the screen is set to black. I think it is not the kernel, it happens too fast, and when I enable kernel logging, I receive the first kernel message only a few seconds later.

I tried to search for info, and I am confused. What is the expected behavior for the use_graphics_for option? I thought it will keep the banner image until the booting OS overwrites the screen, but sometimes I read this option will set the background to the upleft pixel's color of the banner.

Either way, would it be feasible to add an option to not bother with the screen, just leave as-is, and allow the upcoming OS to handle any graphical boot progress?

Best regards,
Tibor Sipos

[dakanji]

What is the expected behavior for the use_graphics_for option?

The setting is to determine which mode, graphics or text, the screen is to be set to before passing control over to what is to be run next.

I thought it will keep the banner image until the booting OS overwrites the screen, but sometimes I read this option will set the background to the upleft pixel's color of the banner.

The screen is cleared before exiting and handing off to something else.

Either way, would it be feasible to add an option to not bother with the screen, just leave as-is, and allow the upcoming OS to handle any graphical boot progress?

As the maintainer mentioned back in 2018 above, exiting while leaving a dirty screen behind is trivial. A bit more effort needed to clean up, then load an arbitrary user-defined image which is then left behind for whatever comes next to handle.

RefindPlus actually already has an option to clean up and then load an arbitrary user defined image. Not gotten round to testing on something with deferred takeover present and not sure whether that image gets passed down as expected. Probably not.

Ultimately don't do exotic stuff ... I use Debian btw ;- )

[Tibor Sipos]

Thank you! Yepp, the first part was clear, but I was not sure how it leaves the screen in graphics mode. And now I see why it is complicated (it would need to remove icons, shadows, text, etc, or quickly redraw to a defined image).

Yesterday I gave a try to RefindPlus, because I had the feeling it will do that. :) I used the GitHub Actions method, which ran fine and produced REL efi files. I added the UEFI_APP---x64_RefindPlus_REL.efi file with efibootmgr as a separate entry, but it produced only a black screen. (Weird enough, until I deleted this entry, even the previous rEFInd entry was unbootable, too.) So far I stuck, need to test it more and find out how to make it work.

Anyway, if I use RefindPlus, what options should I use to get the described method? (Clear screen and keep the picture which was specified in the banner= config option.)

Well, nowadays Debian is the exotic, I think (same as Gentoo) - these are not shiny, UI-GUI-based distros, just pure old cold war technic, metal and blood. Quite exotic for modern users. :)

[Tibor Sipos]

Just an update I get black screen with the official binary release, too (so it is quite hard to debug :D ).

Let's hope I can find out what does it cause - I am curious how RefindPlus can be configured for keeping background image, and how it works with deferred takeover.