is there a up to date plymouth / splash screen guide?

[pomtom44]

HI all.
is there a fixed / working / up to date guide on how to get a boot splash screen working.
I tried to follow the wiki, but ran into issues just trying to compile the plymouth install.
For a disclaimer, I am running on a Raspi 3

[Rich]

Hi pomtom44
Maybe some of these will be of use.
This one is piCore specific:
https://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php/topic,25171.0.html

These 2 are for Tinycore in general:
https://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php/topic,25456.0.html
https://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php/topic,24622.0.html

[pomtom44]

Hi Rich

Thanks for the links.

I had a read though all 3 and got part way, but getting stuck now and im not sure where to go from here.
I understand it may be beyond my knowledge and if so, im happy to just leave it as is.

Following your post #6 I did run into a few issues

tce-load -wil fbv
I get file not found error.

I managed to find this library
https://github.com/godspeed1989/fbv
And managed to compile and install it, (after a few errors and trials)

But once installed I loaded the custom boot image as the rest of your post says to do.
However didn't get a splash screen on boot.

I did manually run
/usr/local/bin/fbv -aui /etc/init.d/splash.png

And get this error
setup console
/etc/init.d/splash.png: Unable to access file or file format unknown.

Im not sure if it is due to something missing or the fact I had to compile it myself.

The other option (and im not sure if this would affect it) is my odd display resolution of 1920x480
Everything else works fine once the OS has booted into the GUI, and if i have the console output enabled, that displays fine on the screen

I suspect its something to do with the complied FBV and not working on a arm/pi?

[pomtom44]

Hi Rich

Thanks for the links.

I had a read though all 3 and got part way, but getting stuck now and im not sure where to go from here.
I understand it may be beyond my knowledge and if so, im happy to just leave it as is.

Following your post #6 I did run into a few issues

tce-load -wil fbv
I get file not found error.

I managed to find this library
https://github.com/godspeed1989/fbv
And managed to compile and install it, (after a few errors and trials)

But once installed I loaded the custom boot image as the rest of your post says to do.
However didn't get a splash screen on boot.

I did manually run
/usr/local/bin/fbv -aui /etc/init.d/splash.png

And get this error
setup console
/etc/init.d/splash.png: Unable to access file or file format unknown.

Im not sure if it is due to something missing or the fact I had to compile it myself.

The other option (and im not sure if this would affect it) is my odd display resolution of 1920x480
Everything else works fine once the OS has booted into the GUI, and if i have the console output enabled, that displays fine on the screen

I suspect its something to do with the complied FBV and not working on a arm/pi?

Follow up to this,
Found this thread which im now following
https://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php/topic,21566.0.html

Will update how that goes

[pomtom44]

Hi Rich

Thanks for the links.

I had a read though all 3 and got part way, but getting stuck now and im not sure where to go from here.
I understand it may be beyond my knowledge and if so, im happy to just leave it as is.

Following your post #6 I did run into a few issues

tce-load -wil fbv
I get file not found error.

I managed to find this library
https://github.com/godspeed1989/fbv
And managed to compile and install it, (after a few errors and trials)

But once installed I loaded the custom boot image as the rest of your post says to do.
However didn't get a splash screen on boot.

I did manually run
/usr/local/bin/fbv -aui /etc/init.d/splash.png

And get this error
setup console
/etc/init.d/splash.png: Unable to access file or file format unknown.

Im not sure if it is due to something missing or the fact I had to compile it myself.

The other option (and im not sure if this would affect it) is my odd display resolution of 1920x480
Everything else works fine once the OS has booted into the GUI, and if i have the console output enabled, that displays fine on the screen

I suspect its something to do with the complied FBV and not working on a arm/pi?

Follow up to this,
Found this thread which im now following
https://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php/topic,21566.0.html

Will update how that goes

Ok so update.

Managed to get it working when I run the command manually, and when I put the command in the boot process, I have fixed the missing lib errors.
However I don't get a splashscreen, I get the flasing _ icon, then it loads the desktop

Not sure again if something to do with my odd screen resolution and not liking the VGA resolutions on the boot?
I did try VGA=ask and didn't get a prompt, so maybe im putting it in the wrong place?
Im adding it to the end of the cmdline.txt entry

[pomtom44]

Next update
Found another guide which had some flags I had removed during testing
Using these now works
 console=tty9 logo.nologo=1

Now the only issue is I get the ASCII of the penguin, then a black screen for maybe 2-3 seconds, then the desktop loads.
Time to track that down

[Rich]

Hi pomtom44

... Now the only issue is I get the ASCII of the penguin, then a black screen for maybe 2-3 seconds, then the desktop loads.
Time to track that down

Are you referring to  /etc/motd ?

[pomtom44]

Hi pomtom44

... Now the only issue is I get the ASCII of the penguin, then a black screen for maybe 2-3 seconds, then the desktop loads.
Time to track that down

Are you referring to  /etc/motd ?

Yeah, just found that myself.

I have removed the motd file and now it doesnt show it during boot.
However I still get 2-3 seconds of black screen before the desktop loads
I assume that is when the boot process has finished and before the desktop interface has loaded?

I removed the
/usr/bin/killall -q fbv &
line from my rcS file hoping it would keep it around longer, but no luck.

[Rich]

Hi pomtom44
The delay may be from the GUI loading. When the GUI loads
it takes over control of the screen, which is probably when the
screen goes black.

[pomtom44]

Hi pomtom44
The delay may be from the GUI loading. When the GUI loads
it takes over control of the screen, which is probably when the
screen goes black.

That sounds about right from what im seeing.
I have had a quick look to see if there is a way to add a loading screen to the x display im using, or if there is a way to launch in background for a few seconds, but doesn't appear to be something easy

I guess a black flicker is better then nothing

[curaga]

If your python GUI takes a couple seconds to load, you could set a X wallpaper (or plain color) as the first X app to run. xsetroot can set a solid color, hsetroot or other utils can set a wallpaper.

You could also try to "pre-cache" your python gui before X loads, ie trying to run it but have it fail because there is no X yet, such that the boot waits for it while the splash pic shows. Not sure if it'll help though, depends why it takes the time.

[Rich]

Hi pomtom44
Maybe you could create a plain text file that lists the
steps you took to make the Pi display a splash screen
and attach it to your next post. This may help the next
person who wishes to accomplish the same task.

[pomtom44]

If your python GUI takes a couple seconds to load, you could set a X wallpaper (or plain color) as the first X app to run. xsetroot can set a solid color, hsetroot or other utils can set a wallpaper.

You could also try to "pre-cache" your python gui before X loads, ie trying to run it but have it fail because there is no X yet, such that the boot waits for it while the splash pic shows. Not sure if it'll help though, depends why it takes the time.

I already have done that, it still blanks the screen for about 1-2 seconds before displaying the wallpaper
so unless theres a way to delay the boot splash from closing, and run it overtop of the x process, i dont think theres a easy way to fix it

[pomtom44]

Hi pomtom44
Maybe you could create a plain text file that lists the
steps you took to make the Pi display a splash screen
and attach it to your next post. This may help the next
person who wishes to accomplish the same task.

Thats not a bad idea.
Ill work through it over the weekend and try remember the steps I took
I may also have to re-do the steps for a regular resolution screen as mine is a very ultrawide so some steps may only be relevant to my setup