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

[Michal Januszewski]

> If i understood well F2 is managed from splash_util not splash_helper.
> Also, my config isn't really gentoo compliant (i don't use genkernel)
> and i would avoid the need of splash_util.static. I'm loading
> splash_helper from bzImage via initramfs archive to do the job. At this
> stage the alt+F1 key gives me the ability to switch to the verbose mode,
> have a look at the display to see what is going on (i'm kind of curious
> :) and switch back to the silent mode like i'm able with splash_util.
> The problem is, i cannot switch back to the silent mode until
> splash_util is loaded. I could say, the key Alt+F1 is not
> "bidirectional", in other words the display cannot go back to the
> precedent mode.

Alt+F1 was never meant to be bidirectional -- it's the usual key
combination to switch to tty1 (Alt+F2 to tty2, Alt+F3 to tty3 etc).
Switching back to verbose during early userspace is currently
unsupported. If you need it really badly, let me know and I'll see
whether I can hack a simple solution for it.
 
> The second issue is, i'm no more able to see the purple vertical bar at
> the right of the screen during the verbose mode. The screen only looks
> like as an usual tty. I'm quite sure, it was possible in the past.

Is the verbose mode activated at a later time? Are you sure you have
compiled splashutils with fbsplash-support enabled?
 
> PS: I have tried splashutils 1.4 but it doesn't work for me. The screen
> stays black... until i press alt+f1 or F2. At first, i thought that
> could be the radeonfb driver, but it seems not. I didn't take too much
> time to look after it and i switched back to splashutils 1.3.1 for the
> moment.

That could be either a bug in splashutils or a problem with how you're
building your initramfs image. Could you provide some more details about
how it is created?

Best regards.
-- 
Michal Januszewski                              JID: spock@×××××××××.org
Gentoo Linux Developer                    http://people.gentoo.org/spock