Where have my penguins gone?
 

I switched to the Current kernel (5.4.24) to test out a program that was misbehaving (more info here if you're interested). I'm too lazy to go through all the palaver of switching back again. But I miss the four penguins that used to appear after the kernel had loaded.

What happened to them? Did Pat decide they were too frivolous?

I just rebooted to double check and they are still there.
:)

So where have mine gone? Apart from that everything seems to function normally.

I can see them here too. I'm running 5.4.28 now but they were there with 5.4.24 (IIRC).
Take a look at this, but it is old from 2018.
https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...nd-4175644736/

Maybe it is something with the early video driver, they disappear with screen refresh.

@Paulo2,
Thanks for that. I had forgotten all about it, but, then, these days I'm lucky I remember my own name. :scratch:
:)

I've checked that Arch post and it doesn't seem to apply to me.
I must check next time what actually is the first thing that appears. It used to be the cpu penguins and then the names of the modules loaded from the initrd.

I'm at the age (and mindset) that, try as I may, I don't learn something new everyday.

Today I did, thank you.

cheers,'

Hazel: Are you running a recent UEFI machine and using ELILO? If so the problem may be related to this.

Some newer machines use 64-bit addressing for the efifb, and this can cause problems. Basically, it means you have no framebuffer until KMS kicks in.

Do:and see what you get.

If you get an error message (invalid address, or similar) you will need to switch to grub as a bootloader. Grub supports 64-bit efifb. elilo doesn't. I'm not sure what the position is with lilo, as all my UEFI machines use either elilo (for older graphics chips) or grub (for newer ones).

This bug can also cause the installer to hang if you are running recent Intel graphics. It took me a long time to find the cause! https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...re-4175671086/

That link will show you how to get the installer to work. I've only just managed to get grub working the way I want on my laptop (Intel 620 graphics), so I'm not in a position to write up a "HowTo" on that! Slackware's grub implementation seems to be somewhat different to the way a Google search implies (no grub-update), but is otherwise not too bad to grapple with. Just different! ;)

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Pete

That's very interesting but I do have a framebuffer.
If I didn't, presumably I wouldn't have seen any penguins with the old kernel either. This is an old machine btw. I'm neither a gamer nor a media fiend so I don't see why I should fork out money on new hardware with capacities that I don't need.

I haven't looked at the Slackware GRUB but, given the Slack philosophy, I'd be surprised if it came festooned with all those automated scripts that make GRUB so complicated in other distros.

Ah! OK, if you have a framebuffer, its not the same problem then!

Usually, its the framebuffer that kicks in before kms that puts the penguins up. I wasn't getting any penguins or the first part of the boot messages. I only started seeing stuff when kms kicked in. And when trying to install, it froze solid as soon as the initrd had loaded - again, presumably due to the absence of a framebuffer.

Are you seeing the initial part of the boot screen? The messages where you would normally see the penguins? And does the resolution change once kms arrives? That may give you a clue.

Also I note you say you are using the -current kernel, but not -current? That may have something to do with it. It might be worth compiling the kernel yourself using the config from -current. -current has diverged a *long* way from 14.2 now, and you may be missing something that the -current kernel expects.

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Pete

Or I could just go back to the old kernel. There's no longer any particular reason to use this one.

All the same, I do want to try and see if I can identify the first output from this kernel at boot.

Yes, I lived without the penguins and initial boot screen on my laptop, because it still worked. But with Slackware-15 on the horizon, I wanted to get the installer to work, as I had to install via LiveSlack to get it on this laptop.

Once I discovered the problem and got it sorted, the current "self isolation" has given me the opportuntiy to play with grub and get it to work as I want on the offending laptop.

Its an ill-wind.....! ;)

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Pete

I carefully checked my boot messages this morning. The first thing to come up was the modules loading from the initrd. That used to be the first thing that came up after the cpu count and display. So it's not a whole stash of stuff that has vanished, just the 4 penguins.

My penguins always disappear after i915 loads from initrd. If I re-compile i915 into the kernel with the framebuffer flag it loads all the way from boot til I start X.

Nobody responded with "Antarctica"?

In a '1st world problem' I can see my penguins on every boot but since I upgraded to a 16 core, 32 thread, CPU I do not see all of them; I have to imagine them trailing off into the empty space next to the monitor :(

Or "Madagascar"?

Hazel, did you ever get your penguins back? I was just modifying my /etc/default/grub file (after Didier Spaier gave me the fix for something) and found this that I had annotated some time ago (my old memory is going) -

Not sure if it would help in your case but worth a look maybe.

No, I never got them back. And I just checked for an fbcon module and it isn't present. No mention of it in modules.builtin either. The only thing in the config file that seems relevant is CONFIG_DRM_VMWGFX_FBCON, which is on. I know there used to be an fbcon module in earlier kernels; I remember building it in LFS. I wonder if it still exists.

Maybe this is relevant:
I've always put vga=normal on my command line. Is that no longer a good idea?

Where have my penguins gone?
 

That will stop the penguins from appearing.

I mistakenly attributed the disappearance due to the nouveau driver - and when I installed the blacklist , my framebuffer and penguins would now remain - it is not the case on --Current as it always disappears after a certain point. Overall I never made a fuss about it, but since this thread I guess I will post what I see; and can confirm the penguins up and disappear:

That's because it's winter now, so most Antarctic penguins take the opportunity to migrate north to Australia. The driver isn't the cold in Antarctica, it's because the marine drop bears are dormant this time of year.

I'm not sure if this helps or not, but I've always had the opposite situation of wanting to get rid of the penguins. Currently (Slackare 64, Current installed in March) I added "logo.nolog" to the "append" line in my lilo.conf. I don't see how one could *accidently* do that but what do I know?

p.s. Remember the Bugs Bunny cartoon where Bugs meets a lost penguin and then helps him get home?

Most of my systems use an EFI bios these days, but on one older machine I've set vga=791 (1024x768x64K) and I get penguins on it. It currently uses a cheap Radeon gfx card, but also worked when I had an old NVidia card in it.

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Pete

To clarify - in 14.2 my actual machine - when I first installed Slackware nouveau was installed by default and at a certain point the same behavior would occur, I would have the penguins and then at one point the screen would refresh and the penguins would be gone; once I blacklisted the nouveau driver, that stopped and I had the penguins all the way through. I don't know why that is, and I do not know why in current that is no longer the case; then again Current is in a vm. *shrug*

On all my machines, the penguins only appear for the initial part of boot. Once the proper graphics driver loads (rather than the frame buffer used for the initial part of boot), the penguins disappear.

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Pete

I am dumb so this is why I am asking - I thought the driver (graphics) itself is not at all loaded until xorg starts? At least that as what I thought since if you boot Slackware as is, you are not automatically placed in an xsession. If I am wrong and the driver is loaded prior even xorg is started (either automatically or startx) I'd like to have that clarified.

I'm no expert here, but my understanding is that the vesa frame buffer is used initially, then at some point the graphics driver gets loaded by the kernel. X eventually *configures* it, but up to that point it just uses a default setting.

Certainly, the screen blanks momentarily at the point that the penguins disappear, and then comes back in a completely different resolution. This appears to be the point at which the graphics driver proper takes over from the vesa frame buffer.

However, I stand to be corrected! :)

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Pete

Graphics doesn't necessarily mean X. Yes, it's true that Slackware starts at a virtual console by default (though I believe you can easily configure it to use kdm for a graphical login), but the Linux kernel includes a thing called a framebuffer that can provide read-only graphics.

There are quite a few command line display programs that use framebuffer graphics.

To get back to my original beef, taking "vga=normal" off my kernel command line doesn't bring my penguins back. I get the impression that the earliest stage of the boot (before the first kernel messages appear)becomes a bit slower, but there is no other change.

Have you tried setting "vga=791" or whatever is appropriate for your monitor? I'm not promising it will work, but its a simple tweak and worth a try!

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Pete

How do I find out the correct mode number for my monitor? Remember I am hopeless with hardware!

If you have the standard Slackware lilo.conf file, the different numbers show their associated resolution. Unless you are running a CRT, its not all that critical. Assuming you have a reasonably modern LCD, then 791 should be OK. It corresponds to 1024x768 resolution, and 64K colours. Any decent LCD should have no problem with 1024x768 (most LCDs these days are 1920x1080). I suspect that its the 3rd part that is your problem, as that defines the colour depth. I think the penguins require a certain colour depth to function.

If you want to be really cautious, you could try 787 (800x600x256) - even an old CRT should handle that - or 788 (800x600x32K). But I'm pretty sure that 791 (1024x768 and 64K colours) should be fine.

Its a long time since I used it, but I have a feeling that vga=normal sets the resolution to 640x480 and minimal (or maybe no) colour. I think its the latter bit that might be your problem.

But I'm only an amateur twiddler of these things! ;) (I'm a retired broadcast TV engineer, not a computer professional!).

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Pete

If you're running lilo (I don't know about grub or elilo) take a look if it helps https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...ml#post5942036

My logo with lilo and attached boot with elilo. Not much difference and nothing appended to lilo/elilo ;)

Ok I really like that - I wouldn't mind that as the default for Slackware :D

"vga=791" didn't do it for me, so I'll try some of the suggestions in that thread Paulo2 posted.

Anything that works in lilo should work with elilo too because the configuration interface is the same, although elilo is a very different beast under the bonnet. And all you're really doing after all is passing boot options to the kernel.

Ah, well! It was simple, so worth a try! ;)

Er - elilo? Are you running uefi hardware? If so, it might be that you've run into the UEFI frame buffer bug that I ran into on one of my machines. Some machines use 64-bit addressing for the efifb, and elilo can't cope with that. The only solution is to switch to grub.

Luckily, Slackware makes this fairly easy.

--
Pete

Yes, it's a UEFI machine. But it only started censoring the penguins when I switched from a Series 4 to a Series 5 kernel, so the problem is unlikely to lie with elilo.

OK, but there may be a difference in the way the 4.X and 5.X kernels handle the efifb. (The initial part of the boot is handled by the efifb, but when I grepped dmesg for efifb, I got a bunch of errors.) I don't know for sure (I'm not that clever!). But I do know that switching to grub got the penguins and initial boot screen back on my laptop (newest machine).

Your machine doesn't have an Insyde BIOS by any chance, does it? That's what my problematic laptop has.

No, it's American Megatrends. An old company. I remember when they and Phoenix made all the BIOses.

This might be informative for them as understands hardware!

FWIW, Tux and friends are always there when I boot up, so here is the first section of my lilo.conf,

Ah! American Megatrends! I haven't seen one of those in a while, but have fond memories!

Well, I'm about out of ideas. Just one thing, have you tried booting one of AlienBob's SlackwareLive versions? You can find them at Slackware.uk, under people/alien-slacklive/latest. Basically, its a version of slackware that you can run from a pendrive. I haven't used it for a while, but I'm pretty certain it boots from grub. It might give a clue to what's going on. It certainly helped me sort out my laptop!

Oh, they are still around.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Megatrends
They now call themselves, AMI.
I have a fairly new m/b and the BIOS is made by AMI, but I can't see their name, for whatever reason, except when burning a new BIOS. At that time the full name is displayed.

If you are willing to build your own kernel, I can attach ppm file (if forum permits).

Just in case enable

CONFIG_X86_SYSFB
and
CONFIG_FB_SIMPLE
I don't know if Slackware kernel has these options enabled (I build my own kernels) but this should fix any feature issues with penguins.

to make it even more fancy apply to lilo.conf
append="vt.color=2"
this would make boot messages green
more colors to play around:
1 blue dark
2 green dark
3 cyan dark
4 red dark
5 magenta dark
6 yellow dark
7 white bright
8 white dark
9 cyan dark
10 bright green
11 bright cyan
12 dark magenta
13 bright magenta
14 bright yellow
15 white
16 black on blue background

you can modify both foreground and background colors.
Unfortunately this does not work in elilo but lilo works as should grub

Neat! Actually yes Slackware does have FB enabled in the kernel - to be fair right now I am too lazy to recompile my kernel though lol.

So I tried the kernel option "fbcon=nodefer". Still no penguins! But I've checked the kernel configuration, and those two options specified by Aeterna are not set in Patrick's default build. So I'll try rebuilding with them set and see what that does. It can't do any harm!

Gee... I have never even seen these penguins, except when I used SuSE (way back when they still had the lowercase 'u' in their name).

I didn't realise that it was a standard feature in the Linux kernel, but I thought it was something specific to SuSE.

No, it's always been a kernel thing. But it needs a framebuffer console because a text console can't show images.

Using the lilo.conf as show in post #42, above, this what I see every time the machine boots up,