Re: [gentoo-kernel] I'm not able to get the vertical bar with gensplash after issuing alt+f1 key during the earlier boot stage

[Jimmy Jazz]

Hello Spock,

Sorry for the late reply. It becomes an habit :) Anyway, i was busy to
get the early boot script work with splashutils daemon last week end. I
didn't even have too much time to decipher all the possibilities your
program offers. I certainly missed some features it would offer. Also, i
still encountered many difficulties with the daemon and i would like to
discuss about it with you and perhaps even convince you to bring some
modifications to it.


The idea is: - to get a usable environment, even with music (debugging
could be quite long ;), when you are not able to boot the system anymore
(vi, gpm, alias, lvm, mdsetup, vgscan, fsck etc),- to stay full modular
and also - to support any filesystem you want (reiserfs, etc.) before
you even know anything about your drives. Most everything, i still want
to get the system as simple as possible.

In fact, after customising a configuration file that handles icon and
animation pictures, i begin to get in trouble :)

I need the helper after the daemon has stopped (it has displayed a lot
of nice icons before) and when the script switched to the real root file
system. It hides the console when the script will proceed.

As the helper didn't understand services, all the icons are displayed on
the screen and are scrambled with vertical stripes. To get rid of that,
i need to delete all the icon/anim lines in the configuration file. That
is a pity. Indeed, it would certainly be good to add some more options
to the helper to avoid the script to have to modify the configuration
file every time it calls the helper. Indeed, the file cannot contain
pre-declaration of icon/anim directives. Busybox doesn't understand "sed
-i", so you need a temporary file and your script becomes... more
complicated.

About animations, they are looping quite strangely when any other icons
are declared in the configuration file. They are displayed too, whatever
the services they belong to are.

Anyway, i'm quite satisfied with the result. Ash is strong enough to
handle the job well. The script stays readable :)

I tried to intercept the keyboard keys directly from the script as
gentoo baselayout v1 does (interactive mode) but without much success.
When the silent mode is called from the helper or the daemon, the script
doesn't react to the key i pressed, except the Alt-F1 key managed by the
kernel or the F2 key when called from the daemon.  I tried stty in raw
mode too. I will confess, i didn't remember how ttys are handled by the
kernel and who cares ... until you really need them, especially when you
try to call extra keys like F3 or something similar :)

IMHO, letting the script directly handle the keyboard would help to
simplify all the thing, but how ?

Also, you asked me if i have tried baselayout version 2 with splashutils.

In fact, i will certainly never be able to switch to version 2. It is
written mostly in C (and that is a bad idea ;). It isn't flexible enough
whereas a rc bash will always be. In my case, it won't call the critical
services the kernel will need early enough or even in the right order to
help a mdp/lvm boot disk to mount :(.

Believe me, only scripts are able to save the world !

Jj
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