Poor man's graphical boot in Slackware 13.X...
 

Well, I do not know if all knew, but the BusyBox version used by Slackware 13.X for initrd, has an "application" called /sbin/fbsplash, which displays an image and a progress bar, of course, in the console framebuffer.

An excerpt from the BusyBox code:

So, theoretically, we could, only properly modifying the boot scripts, to have a graphical boot on Slackware.

Ideas? Is someone interested?

A first thought ...

So, /sbin/fbsplash is (obviously), part of initrd's (in fact a symlink to /bin/busybox) ...Modifying corresponding the init script in initrd, we can launch the /sbin/fbsplash execution.

Now, to have a system graphical boot progress to end, we are to have the controlling pipe in an accessible position after initrd ends its operation.

I noticed that /proc filesystem is mounted by initrd and moved to real root after initrd ends its operation...

So if we use as the pipe /proc/fbsplash, it will be accessible at all times, until we launch the X session.

Also, it seems very simple control of fbsplash ...

Simply, to change the splash progress, should add to scripts a command something like:

echo 33 > /proc/fbspash

or, finally:

echo "exit" > /proc/fbspash

Are you working on a proof of concept? If you get it working you could send an email to PV and it might get accepted. Me I like to see all those pretty line of text go by.

samac

A boot splash will never be part of Slackware's startup sequence. The LILO bitmap was probably as far as it will ever go with regard to boot customization.

Eric

And thank God for it! I guess I do not see the point of tacking on a graphical boot just to hide the text scrolling by, but then I see no point in booting straight into X when it takes no effort to type "startx".

For me it lets me know everything has come up clean and is ready to go, with a gui hiding everything you are in the dark, something I hate about Windows.

Also, I guess I used DOS and Windows 3.1 for to long and got used to typing "win" after the DOS text boot screens went by... :-)

Anyway... to each his own....

Shylock did a pretty good job of setting one up. I haven't really had the time to mess with it, though I'd really like to have it on my laptop just for funzies.

http://pdg86.wordpress.com/2009/12/3...th-bootsplash/

Praise Bob for that! I really appreciate being able to read all of the text going by, as I then have an idea as to the health of my system. I always boot into run level 3 on my stations.

I hardly ever reboot these days. Hibernation works fine for me and I get get a tux logo then blank screen followed by straight into X, or whichever state I left it last.

It probably would be fun to play with boot splash though.

I'm switching to VGA=NORMAL. I boot straight into X, and my framebuffer drivers don't support my monitor's native resolution, so I might as well just turn the framebuffer off and enjoy the resulting faster boot.

Makes sense when the user is a child of seven years, who uses the computer to play Miniclip games.

I know a Slackware with a firewall that default accepts connections only from here:

http://www.kidsgames247.com/

You known... Never Say Never! ;)

Yeah! It's a proof of concept!

Well, I discovered a new toy! Slackware have an boot splash built-in! :D

Well, as Alien Bob is a developer for Slackware who works closely with PV he would know. A graphical splash screen isn't really the slackware way of things.

A graphical boot is nice for me, just a matter of taste, I guess.
I share the opinion of being notified if something is wrong, but what if everything is OK, as it should be 99% of the times?
Think about this: a system boots in a graphical mode when everything is normal, but detects errors and throws the user to the text mode if something goes wrong.
If everything is OK you should not need to read all the output, right? And if I'm just casually starting my desktop system (as oposed to restarting a server to troubleshoot it or something) and some non-fatal error occurs, I will probably miss that error notification anyway as I won't be checking the text all the time. At least other distros do a nice OK/FAILED thingy in red/green depending on the case.

What if we had a file in where all boot errors were logged and then as part of the login some daemon reads it and says "X failed to start because of Y" or alike. A fatal error will stop the boot process, and a non-fatal error would appear in your user login, making it very hard to miss :-)

And regarding the "loading image" text when resuming after hibernate: if all the screen does is show the percentage, why can't we have a nice image with a progress bar or something?

So, why not? don't make it enabled by default, and give me a choice of disabling it on each boot (sort of like the 'quiet' kernel option, or the runlevel I want to start in) so if something is wrong I can reboot to see how everything goes. I'm not saying Slackware must do what others do, I just say it's nice to tinker with this kind of stuff. After all, Slackware is about having a barebones system and customize it, right?

Regards

Well, we don't known how will think The Great P in Anno Domini 2020... Even He don't known. :)