splash —
splash
screen / screen saver interface
device splash
The
splash 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.
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
- Windows 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.
The
EXAMPLES section illustrates
how to set up the splash screen.
If the standard VGA video mode is used, the size of the bitmap must be 320x200
or less. If you enable the VESA mode support in the kernel, either by
statically linking the VESA module or by loading the VESA module (see
vga(4)), you can load bitmaps up to a resolution
of 1024x768, depending on the VESA BIOS and the amount of video memory on the
video card.
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.
- plasma_saver.ko
- Draws an animated interference pattern.
- 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.
Screen saver modules can be loaded using
kldload(8):
kldload logo_saver
The timeout value in seconds can be specified as follows:
vidcontrol -t N
Alternatively, you can set the
saver variable
in the
/etc/rc.conf to the screen saver of your
choice and the timeout value to the
blanktime
variable so that the screen saver is automatically loaded and the timeout
value is set when the system starts.
The screen saver may be instantly activated by hitting the
saver key: the defaults are
Shift-Pause on the AT enhanced keyboard and
Shift-Ctrl-NumLock/Pause on the AT 84 keyboard.
You can change the
saver key by modifying the
keymap (see
kbdcontrol(1),
keymap(5)), and assign the
saver function to a key of your preference.
The screen saver will not run if the screen is not in text mode.
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.
- /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
In order to load the splash screen or the screen saver, you must have the
following line in the kernel configuration file.
device splash
Next, edit
/boot/loader.conf (see
loader.conf(5)) and include the following lines:
splash_bmp_load="YES"
bitmap_load="YES"
bitmap_name="/boot/chuck.bmp"
In the above example, the file
/boot/chuck.bmp is
loaded. In the following example, the VESA module is loaded so that a bitmap
file which cannot be displayed in standard VGA modes may be shown using one of
the VESA video modes.
splash_pcx_load="YES"
vesa_load="YES"
bitmap_load="YES"
bitmap_name="/boot/chuck.pcx"
If the VESA support is statically linked to the kernel, it is not necessary to
load the VESA module. Just load the bitmap file and the splash decoder module
as in the first example above.
To load a binary ASCII drawing and display this while booting, include the
following into your
/boot/loader.conf:
splash_txt_load="YES"
bitmap_load="YES"
bitmap_name="/boot/splash.bin"
vidcontrol(1),
syscons(4),
vga(4),
loader.conf(5),
rc.conf(5),
kldload(8),
kldunload(8)
The
splash driver first appeared in
FreeBSD 3.1.
The
splash driver and this manual page were written
by
Kazutaka Yokota
<
[email protected]>.
The
splash_bmp module was written by
Michael Smith
<
[email protected]>
and
Kazutaka Yokota. The
splash_pcx module was written by
Dag-Erling Smørgrav
<
[email protected]>
based on the
splash_bmp code. The
splash_txt module was written by
Antony Mawer
<
[email protected]>
based on the
splash_bmp code, with some
additional inspiration from the
daemon_saver
code. The
logo_saver,
plasma_saver,
rain_saver and
warp_saver modules were written by
Dag-Erling Smørgrav
<
[email protected]>.
Both the splash screen and the screen saver work with
syscons(4) only.
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.