From owner-freebsd-hackers Sun Feb 16 16:31:21 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id QAA09359 for hackers-outgoing; Sun, 16 Feb 1997 16:31:21 -0800 (PST) Received: from panda.hilink.com.au (panda.hilink.com.au [203.2.144.5]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id QAA09352 for ; Sun, 16 Feb 1997 16:31:12 -0800 (PST) Received: (from danny@localhost) by panda.hilink.com.au (8.7.6/8.7.3) id LAA18670; Mon, 17 Feb 1997 11:33:18 +1100 (EST) Date: Mon, 17 Feb 1997 11:33:17 +1100 (EST) From: "Daniel O'Callaghan" To: Michael Smith cc: Eivind Eklund , giles@nemeton.com.au, avalon@coombs.anu.edu.au, jehamby@lightside.com, hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: boot messages (Was: Sun Workshop compiler vs. GCC?) In-Reply-To: <199702162320.JAA05708@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk On Mon, 17 Feb 1997, Michael Smith wrote: > Eivind Eklund stands accused of saying: > > > > How difficult early is it possible to switch to another vty? If this is > > possible to do real early, we can have a splash screen on the second vty, > > and "knowledgable people" will know they can switch back with ALT-F1. > > All screens should be cleared on finished boot, of course, unless the > > system is set up to boot directly to xdm. > > The splash-screen is actually implemented as an alternate display mode for > a single VT. But you're not paying attention : it is NOT POSSIBLE to > detect keystrokes on the console while the device probes are running, > because interrupts are Turned Off. > > Once interrupts are enabled, the hotkey toggles the screen. Seems to me that the most logical and expedient thing to so is to put a little more text into the "boot: " message. Something like "boot -t for text-mode boot". The other idea which was tossed about some months ago was to skip the splash screen if the image file (/splash.tiff) is not located in /, which makes it very easy to turn splash on/off for the next boot. Danny