Date: Fri, 27 May 2005 15:38:29 +0930 From: Malcolm Kay <malcolm.kay@internode.on.net> To: Scott Long <scottl@samsco.org> Cc: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Context sensitivity in beastie.4th? Message-ID: <200505271538.29810.malcolm.kay@internode.on.net> In-Reply-To: <4296B306.9080300@samsco.org> References: <200505271427.13508.malcolm.kay@internode.on.net> <4296B306.9080300@samsco.org>
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On Fri, 27 May 2005 03:11 pm, Scott Long wrote:
> Malcolm Kay wrote:
> > I have installed FreeBSD 5.4 RELEASE on a new machine,
> > Celeron + SATA drive, without and problems, include a kernel rebuild to
> > support a PCI serial card.
> >
> > But now I wish to change the graphic, beastie, that appears in the boot
> > menu. I am certainly no expert or even acolyte in forth programming but
> > the job appears to be simple enough -- just change the characters in the
> > 'beastie' constructions and if we don't exceed the available screen space
> > all should be well!
> >
> > Well what I got was a cycling reboot going back ech time to the BIOS
> > splash screen and advancing an apparently negligable distance into the
> > FBSD boot sequence.
> >
> > I had actually copied /boot/beastie.4th to /boot/phoenix.4th, edited
> > the copy and pointed /boot/loader.rc at phoenix.4th instead of
> > beastie.4th. Recovery by booting from the distribution CD and entering
> > "Fixit" to change the pointer back to beastie.4th.
> >
> > Most variants on my original attempt ended up the same way, but some
> > crashed with a "directory full" message which seems quite strange as my
> > images have always been smaller than the original 'beastie'.
> >
> > Replacing the colourised version of my 'phoenix' with a copy of the
> > monochrome version worked.
> >
> > At present I have a phoenix.4th file which works but does not exhibit the
> > full image. The differences to the original beastie.4th file are shown
> > here with escape characters replaced by '{esc}' to limit mail confusion.
> >
> > With the line:
> > ( 2dup at-xy ." {esc}[1m^ ^" 1+ )
> > uncommented the system goes back to an infinite boot loop.
> >
> > This all seems very strange and unbelievable -- I must surely be doing
> > something very stupid. Does anyone have any idea what that might be?
>
> Seems to work for me with the commented lines fixed. Btw, you by no
Looks as though I may have some strange hardware problem (Groan) but
I'll push on a bit further.
> doubt have noticed that it's somewhat inconvenient to do 4th programming
> by modifying the boot scripts and then praying that the reboot works.
Yes Yes Yes ! ! !
> It's possible to do 90% of the testing in userland, like I did when I
> wrote beastie.4th.
>
> Go to /sys/boot/ficl. Do 'make clean && make testmain'. This will
> create a binary called 'testmain' either in the '.' directory or in
> /usr/obj/usr/src/sys/boot/ficl. Copy this binary to your home
> directory. Then copy screen.4th, frames.4th, and beastie.4th from
> /boot to your home directory. Next create a file called init.4th
>
> containing the following:
> : boot drop exit ;
> : reboot drop exit ;
>
> load screen.4th
> load frames.4th
> load beastie.4th
> beastie-start
>
> Then run it via './testmain init.4th'. The countdown timer won't
> work and most of the keys naturally won't do what they are supposed to
> do, but everything else in the menu should work just as it would at
> boot. I tested your colorized phoenix this way just now and it worked.
>
Thanks for the suggestion -- I'll give it a go.
> Scott
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