Fbsplash
Fbsplash (formerly gensplash) is a userspace implementation of a splash screen for Linux systems. It provides a graphical environment during system boot using the Linux framebuffer layer.
Contents
Installation
Fbsplash
The fbsplash package is available in the AUR. For console backgrounds (discussed later in this article) you should install a kernel patched with fbcondecor such as linux-fbcondecor.
Scripts
The fbsplash package provides the scripts for basic functionality. If you want more bells and whistles, like smooth progress, filesystem-check progress messages, support for boot-services/'daemons'-icons and theme hook scripts, you may also install the fbsplash-extras package.
Themes
Themes can be found by searching the AUR for fbsplash-theme, in GNOME-Look.org or in KDE-Look.org.
Suspend to Disk
If you want suspend to disk with Uswsusp using Fbsplash, install the uswsusp-fbsplash package from the AUR. Additionally there is limited support for using Fbsplash in the tuxonice-userui package for those using a kernel with the TuxOnIce patch.
Configuration
Kernel Command Line
You now need to set something like quiet loglevel=3 logo.nologo gfxpayload=keep console=tty1 splash=silent,fadein,fadeout,theme:arch-banner-icons
as your kernel command line parameters in your bootloader. See Kernel parameters for more info.
The parameter loglevel=3
prevents kernel messages from garbling the splash even with funny hardware (as recent initscripts do not set this by default any more). quiet
is needed additionally for silencing initcpio messages. logo.nologo
removes the boot logo (not needed with linux-fbcondecor since it does not have one anyway). console=tty1
redirects system messages to tty1 and splash=silent,fadein,fadeout,theme:arch-banner-icons
creates a silent, splash-only boot with fading in/out arch-banner-icons theme.
Configuration Files
Put one or more of the themes you installed into /etc/conf.d/splash
. You can also specify screen resolutions to save some initcpio space:
/etc/conf.d/splash
SPLASH_THEMES=" arch-black arch-banner-icons/1280x1024.cfg arch-banner-noicons/1280x1024.cfg"
Starting Fbsplash early in the initcpio
If uresume and/or encrypt HOOKS are used, add fbsplash after them in /etc/mkinitcpio.conf
, e.g.:
/etc/mkinitcpio.conf
HOOKS="base udev autodetect [...] keymap encrypt uresume fbsplash"
Rebuild your initcpio via mkinitcpio. See the Mkinitcpio article for more info.
If you have trouble getting fbsplash to work and your machine uses KMS (Kernel Mode Setting), try adding the appropriate driver to mkinitcpio.conf.
Console backgrounds
If you have a kernel that supports Fbcondecor (eg. linux-fbcondecor), you can get nice graphical console backgrounds beside the splash screen. Just search the AUR for fbsplash-theme.
After installing your patched kernel and fbsplash, add fbcondecor
to your DAEMONS
array in /etc/rc.conf
:
/etc/rc.conf
DAEMONS=(... fbcondecor ...)
There is also a configuration file /etc/conf.d/fbcondecor
to set up the virtual terminals to be used.
You may even boot up with a nice console background and the plain Arch Linux boot messages instead of a splash screen. Just change your kernel command line to use the verbose mode:
quiet console=tty1 splash=verbose,theme:arch-banner-icons
Links
- http://fbsplash.alanhaggai.org [dead link 2014-05-01]
- http://dev.gentoo.org/~spock/projects/fbcondecor/ [dead link 2014-05-01]