Load/Splash/Boot Screen - grub on debian

[gunflame]

First of all I'm using an emulated version of the Raspberry PI... Hopefully mine will get here in June, but I'm a complete newbie to linux so I thought I would get a head start with the emulation.

Anyways, I'm DESPERATE to get a splash screen on this thing... you know like window's or ubuntu. I'm using the official debian image ( debian6-19-04-2012.img ).

I've been reading about it and I wanted to use SPLASHY.. I got it installed without hickups but when I go to configure it I'm "supposed" to change the /boot/grub/menu.lst file.

I can't find this folder anywhere... does the debian image have grub installed? can I install it myself?

Anyways if you have any suggestions on how to make a splash screen work let me know. Even if it means using another distribution (like archlinux or dunno anything else)

[shirro]

There is no grub on the pi ofcourse so you can't do what you propose on a real machine. On a real Pi add a quiet line to the kernel and it is a blank screen until init except for your raspberry logo (which you can customise when building a kernel). Linux boot is pretty quick.

You can hide your distros output fairly easily (should just be able to send it to another virtual console) rather than go to a splash and try and get it into X or some gles program as fast as you can which is probably a better outcome. Loading an image into the framebuffer on tty1 is pretty straightforward if you still want a splash.

An alternative is to have init start an opengl es animation early in the boot and then kill it near the end and overlay it opaquely with dispmanx. You could probably get a few rotations of a 3d raspberry happening with no appreciable cpu usage while the Pi is loading services and getting an IP address if you like that sort of thing.

[MarshallBanana]

i think grub is not available on arm, but i'm not sure... EDIT: to slow a typer... as shirro says it really is not available... but that doesn't matter really
in the pi the gpu handles the startup...

anyways, what are you supposed to do in the menu.lst file?
never used debian myself, but in gentoo using splashutils it's a matter of providing a initramfs with the appropriate splash-files in it, append the theme and so on the the kernel commandline (and of course have the appropriate kernel-options enabled )

so, what is it you have to do? only append the info to the kernel commandline? then you might wanna edit the cmdline.txt in the /boot partition, those are the parameters that the gpu passes to the kernel (if you use a real pi)

as you wrote you are using an emulatior you have to figure out how you emulator passes parameters to your kernel... (using qemu? then the -append switch might be of help)

[gunflame]

I'm very very thankful to you guys.

Remember I'm extremely new to linux, but in general I know my way around computer since I have done some java and visual basic programming, worked a bit jquery/javascript and also have prepared a few databases and a few small aplications. I'm very "microsoft" savy since my first computer was a IBM PS/2 with MS DOS... but like I said I'm very very new to linux, so I'm learning the basics here.

What do I want to do?
- Hide the start up/boot text (black and white)
- Show a nice image (a simple bitmap would be enough, anything else is a big plus).

There is no grub on the pi (good to know) ofcourse so you can't do what you propose on a real machine. On a real Pi add a quiet line to the kernel (where can I find information about this? will I need to compile the kernel?) and it is a blank screen until init except for your raspberry logo (which you can customise when building a kernel). Linux boot is pretty quick.

You can hide your distros output fairly easily (should just be able to send it to another virtual console) (that means that I would have to create a virtual console with the real raspberryPi? or a you just talking about the emulation?) rather than go to a splash and try and get it into X or some gles program as fast as you can which is probably a better outcome (if I get this correctly, one option is to leave it blank, like you explained earlier, then get into X ASAP so I can have more display options?)so a better outcome would be to . Loading an image into the framebuffer on tty1 is pretty straightforward if you still want a splash (this is like chinese to me any suggestions on where I can learn about this TTY1/framebuffer?).

An alternative is to have init start an opengl es animation early in the boot and then kill it near the end and overlay it opaquely with dispmanx (while this sounds cool it looks a bit more complex, maybe after I have gone through the other steps I'll try to do this, again any reading material?). You could probably get a few rotations of a 3d raspberry happening with no appreciable cpu usage while the Pi is loading services and getting an IP address if you like that sort of thing.

i think grub is not available on arm, but i'm not sure... EDIT: to slow a typer... as shirro says it really is not available... but that doesn't matter really
in the pi the gpu handles the startup...

anyways, what are you supposed to do in the menu.lst file? (this is part of the instructions on how to use splashy. looks like a quiet line to me::: open your menu.lst (/boot/grub/menu.lst) and in the line with kernel value add these words at the end of that line "vga=791 splash quiet")
never used debian myself, but in gentoo using splashutils (will a version of gentoo work on the pi?) it's a matter of providing a initramfs with the appropriate splash-files in it, append the theme and so on the the kernel commandline (and of course have the appropriate kernel-options enabled )

so, what is it you have to do? only append the info to the kernel commandline? then you might wanna edit the cmdline.txt in the /boot partition, those are the parameters that the gpu passes to the kernel (if you use a real pi)

as you wrote you are using an emulatior you have to figure out how you emulator passes parameters to your kernel... (using qemu? then the -append switch might be of help) (yes I'm using qemu for the emulation, I'm reading what you wrote but I need to learn a more on the terminology before I manage to understand it. any suggestions where to find info about it? I'll still look for info on my own , like what initrams is...).

[maribu]

Hi, gunflame!

You may want to look at fbflash http://fbsplash.alanhaggai.org/

I never used it, so I'm not an expert, but this is a userspace implementation of an splash theme. This means you can use it without a bootmanager like GRUB - it works like an "normal" application. All you have to do is to make sure, that it is one of the first programs started.

If I had debian on my PC (no, I'm still waiting for my Pi like you) I would try to install and configure it, so I could tell you if and how it works.

Btw: Welcome to the Linux world! I started to use Linux as primary operating system a few years ago and I'm much more happy with it than with Windows(R)(TM)(...). Why don't you install Linux on your PC as secondary system? You would learn a lot about it and be ready to use the Pi once you get it. If you're going to use debian on you Pi you can choose this distro for your PC, too. (debian will behave quite the same on every platform)

But let me warn you: My first few days with Linux were quite disappointing. I had to learn that there always is way to do the same thing I did on windows as easy as it was there, but I had to google for how to do it or ask other Linux users. So if something isn't working just ask someone before it starts to annoy you.

So good luck with fbflash! And maybe good luck with installing debian on you PC, too.

Cheers,
Maribu

[maribu]

Oh, I was wrong:

Also fbflash needs configuration via kernel parameter. But I suppose editing cmdline.txt on the boot-partition of you SD-card will work.

[gunflame]

Btw: Welcome to the Linux world! I started to use Linux as primary operating system a few years ago and I'm much more happy with it than with Windows(R)(TM)(...). Why don't you install Linux on your PC as secondary system? You would learn a lot about it and be ready to use the Pi once you get it. If you're going to use debian on you Pi you can choose this distro for your PC, too. (debian will behave quite the same on every platform)

But let me warn you: My first few days with Linux were quite disappointing. I had to learn that there always is way to do the same thing I did on windows as easy as it was there, but I had to google for how to do it or ask other Linux users. So if something isn't working just ask someone before it starts to annoy you.

So good luck with fbflash! And maybe good luck with installing debian on you PC, too.

Cheers,
Maribu

I actually did. Well kindo ff. I installed ubuntu on my netbook as the only OS. My main PC is my gaming rig and my internet is horrible (1024 Mbps when it works... usually works at 25% speed), I really don't want to risk losing any information while I mess around. Since my netbook is "expendable" I installed linux and I get to do crazy stuff on it . The downside is that I also have a cool RaspberryPI project and I want to get a head start on and x86 linux is not exactly the same as ARM linux

One of my goals is to learn python and start programming using Linux IDE's... but I have a little project I want to do as soon as my Raspberry PI gets here so I'm trying to work on it.

[ghans]

The things you should look into , AFAIK , are bash scripting and the init mechanism (init scripts / runlevels).

A splash screen should be easily achievable by those means.
Happy Hacking

[MorenoTeleco]

Hi, gunflame!

I have the same problem

Have you found any solution to today?

Thanks,

Alberto