other sections
SPLASH(4) | Device Drivers Manual | SPLASH(4) |
NAME¶
splash
—
splash screen / screen saver interface
SYNOPSIS¶
device splash
DESCRIPTION¶
Thesplash
pseudo device driver adds support
for the splash screen and screen savers to the kernel. This driver is required
if the splash bitmap image is to be loaded or any screen saver is to be used.
Splash screen¶
You can load and display an arbitrary bitmap image file as a welcome banner on the screen when the system is about to start. This image will remain on the screen during kernel initialization process until the login prompt appears on the screen or until a screen saver is loaded and initialized. The image will also disappear if you hit any key, although this may not work immediately if the kernel is still probing devices. If you specify the-c
or
-v
boot option when loading the kernel, the
splash image will not appear. However, it is still loaded and can be used as a
screen saver later: see below.
In order to display the bitmap, the bitmap file itself and the matching splash
image decoder module must be loaded by the boot loader. Currently the
following decoder modules are available:
- splash_bmp.ko
- W*ndows BMP file decoder. While the BMP file format allows images of various color depths, this decoder currently only handles 256 color bitmaps. Bitmaps of other color depths will not be displayed.
- splash_pcx.ko
- ZSoft PCX decoder. This decoder currently only supports version 5 8-bpp single-plane images.
- splash_txt.ko
- TheDraw binary ASCII drawing file decoder. Displays a text-mode 80x25 ASCII drawing, such as that produced by the Binary save format in TheDraw. This format consists of a sequence of two byte pairs representing the 80x25 display, where the first byte is the ASCII character to draw and the second byte indicates the colors/attributes to use when drawing the character.
Screen saver¶
The screen saver will activate when the system is considered idle: i.e. when the user has not typed a key or moved the mouse for a specified period of time. As the screen saver is an optional module, it must be explicitly loaded into memory. Currently the following screen saver modules are available:- blank_saver.ko
- This screen saver simply blanks the screen.
- beastie_saver.ko
- Animated graphical BSD Daemon.
- daemon_saver.ko
- Animated BSD Daemon screen saver.
- dragon_saver.ko
- Draws a random dragon curve.
- fade_saver.ko
- The screen will gradually fade away.
- fire_saver.ko
- A fire which becomes higher as load increases.
- green_saver.ko
- The screen will be blanked, similar to blank_saver.ko. If the monitor and the video card's BIOS support it the screen will also be powered off.
- logo_saver.ko
- Animated graphical FreeBSD logo.
- rain_saver.ko
- Draws a shower on the screen.
- snake_saver.ko
- Draws a snake of string.
- star_saver.ko
- Twinkling stars.
- warp_saver.ko
- Streaking stars.
kldload logo_saver
vidcontrol -t N
Splash screen as a screen saver¶
If you load a splash image but do not load a screen saver, you can continue using the splash module as a screen saver. The screen blanking interval can be specified as described in the Screen saver section above.FILES¶
- /boot/defaults/loader.conf
- boot loader configuration defaults
- /etc/rc.conf
- system configuration information
- /boot/kernel/splash_*.ko
- splash image decoder modules
- /boot/kernel/*_saver.ko
- screen saver modules
- /boot/kernel/vesa.ko
- the VESA support module
EXAMPLES¶
In order to load the splash screen or the screen saver, you must have the following line in the kernel configuration file.device splash
splash_bmp_load="YES" bitmap_load="YES" bitmap_name="/boot/chuck.bmp"
splash_pcx_load="YES" vesa_load="YES" bitmap_load="YES" bitmap_name="/boot/chuck.pcx"
splash_txt_load="YES" bitmap_load="YES" bitmap_name="/boot/splash.bin"
SEE ALSO¶
vidcontrol(1), syscons(4), vga(4), loader.conf(5), rc.conf(5), kldload(8), kldunload(8)HISTORY¶
Thesplash
driver first appeared in
FreeBSD 3.1.
AUTHORS¶
Thesplash
driver and this manual page were
written by Kazutaka Yokota
⟨yokota@FreeBSD.org⟩. The
splash_bmp module was written by
Michael Smith
⟨msmith@FreeBSD.org⟩ and Kazutaka
Yokota. The splash_pcx module was
written by Dag-Erling Smørgrav
⟨des@FreeBSD.org⟩ based on the
splash_bmp code. The
splash_txt module was written by
Antony Mawer
⟨antony@mawer.org⟩ based on the
splash_bmp code, with some additional
inspiration from the daemon_saver code.
CAVEATS¶
Both the splash screen and the screen saver work with syscons(4) only.BUGS¶
If you load a screen saver while another screen saver has already been loaded, the first screen saver will not be automatically unloaded and will remain in memory, wasting kernel memory space.November 29, 2010 | Debian |