Welcome to LinuxQuestions.org, a friendly and active Linux Community.
You are currently viewing LQ as a guest. By joining our community you will have the ability to post topics, receive our newsletter, use the advanced search, subscribe to threads and access many other special features. Registration is quick, simple and absolutely free. Join our community today!
Note that registered members see fewer ads, and ContentLink is completely disabled once you log in.
If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us. If you need to reset your password, click here.
Having a problem logging in? Please visit this page to clear all LQ-related cookies.
Get a virtual cloud desktop with the Linux distro that you want in less than five minutes with Shells! With over 10 pre-installed distros to choose from, the worry-free installation life is here! Whether you are a digital nomad or just looking for flexibility, Shells can put your Linux machine on the device that you want to use.
Exclusive for LQ members, get up to 45% off per month. Click here for more info.
By johngreenwood at 2006-12-27 17:52
This is a guide on how to add an animation to your bootsplash.
Any steps followed from this guide are done so at your own risk
I accept no responsibilty if it goes wrong,
It is simply documentation of what I did to get bootsplash animations to work.
I'm pretty sure there is another way, but I don't know how.
Please note, I did this using Slackware 11, and it may not work for other distros.
or whichever patch it is you have, from the command line. The -p1 is a number one, not an l.
Now that the kernel is patched you will have to recompile it.
from command line do: cd /usr/src/linux
then do: make menuconfig
If using the 2.4 kernel, you need to got to "Console Drivers->", "Frame-Buffer Support" and select "VESA VGA graphics console" and turn on "Use splash screen instead of boot logo"
I think it is different for 2.6 kernels, so, you'll have to look around.
Also, make sure that "Initial Ramdisk support" is enabled in "Block Devices"
After you have done all that, exit, save your kernel configuration, and recompile.
To compile a 2.4 kernel do this:
cd /usr/src/linux
make dep clean modules modules_install bzImage
it is important that bz Image has an "I" and not an "i"
also, if this kernel is the same one you have been using, and you have changed nothing but the stuff for bootsplash, you probably don't need to install the modules, so I just do:
make dep clean bzImage
For 2.6 kernel dep and clean are not necessary.
The compile may take a while, so go and make a cup of coffee or something while it does it's thing.
After the compile is completed, the new kernel will be installed under /usr/src/linux/arch/i386/boot as bzImage
if you are using a different achitecture, it may be in /usr/src/linux/arch/somwhere_else/boot
extract the archive somewhere on your computer and edit the /fingerprint-bs/config/bootsplash-1024x768.cfg file so that the jpeg= and silentjpeg= point to the correct locations which will be /path/to/fingerprint-bs/fingerprint-bs/images/name_of_file.jpg
I have it after: #mount /proc right away:
/sbin/mount/-v proc /proc -n -t proc
The animation will die when runlevel 3 is reached, so if you want the animation to continue, you will have to edit /etc/rc.d/rc.M also.
Add the same command somewhere near the beginning of rc.M
Reboot, and see if it worked.
If it has, you will notice that the animation keeps playing and when you startx you will have some ugly lines moving as a result of the animation. The process is still alive.
find out the process ID by doing
ps -A
and looking for fbmngplay, on my system it is 68
now you know the process ID, edit /etc/rc.d/rc.M again and add at the end:
kill 68 (or what ever ID it has on your system)
Now when you reboot, the animation will be killed by the time you reach the login prompt.
Be aware though, if you add a new process to start during bootup, you should get rid of the kill line in rc.M, the process ID could change and you may kill a process you don't want to kill, you will have to find out the new ID and add that to rc.M
And that should be it, I hope you have as much fun with this as I did.
LinuxQuestions.org is looking for people interested in writing
Editorials, Articles, Reviews, and more. If you'd like to contribute
content, let us know.