Hello! I was wondering if anyone has had any luck installing plymouth for prettier boot process and graphical disk decryption prompt. I’m on a311d on pocket reform, for context, but I’m curious if this works on other SoCs too!
My first stab was installing plymouth and plymouth-themes, and adding “splash” to /etc/default/flash-kernel, (and running sudo flash-kernel). This slightly changes the disk decryption prompt, including some errors, but it still seems to be all text-mode. It looks like this:
Done.
Begin: Mounting root file system ... Begin: running: /scripts/local-top ... meson-pcie fc000000.pcie: error: wait linkup timeout
debugfs: Directory 'ff800280.cec' with parent 'regmap' already present!
panel-mnt-pocket-reform ffd07000.dsi.0: error -ENOENT: cannot get reset-gpios 0
panel-mnt-pocket-reform ffd07000.dsi.0: error -ENOENT: cannot get dcdc-en-gpio
panfrost ffe40000.gpu: error -ENODEV: _opp_set_regulators: no regulator (mali) found
panel-mnt-pocket-reform ffd07000.dsi.0: [mnt pocket reform display] read register 12a: 0x77
mdio_bus mdio_mux-0.0: MDIO device at address 0 is missing.
Please unlock disk reform_crypt:_
and noticeably, typing the disk password produces asterisks on the prompt, so something is definitely changing.
If I uninstall plymouth and plymouth-themes, remove the “splash” parameter, and reboot, I no longer see any errors on the disk decryption prompt and typing in my disk decryption passphrase doesn’t produce any asterisks.
I do note that those error messages still appear in dmesg so I suspect they’re happening regardless of plymouth, but somehow installing plymouth is changing the text-mode prompt but not making Plymouth itself work? Not sure, curious if others have had luck
For some reason, I remember hearing that the reason plymouth wasn’t be using was that it had issues on the Reform. I would image that this follows with the Pocket’s imx based SoC. Don’t quote me on it, but I’m pretty sure that is what was discussed in the past.
Thanks for trying it out, interesting that there’s an actual stacktrace on at least one cpu module
On a311d, the kernel seems to switch to full resolution during boot in a way that I assumed was before hitting userspace, which I thought was kms, but now I’m realizing I’m not sure? I wish it were easier to look up device and driver specific feature support, curious if anyone has any general advice on this.
I got it to work on pocket with rk3588 module. I did sudo apt-get install plymouth plymouth-themes firmware-linux then edited /etc/default/flash-kernel with LINUX_KERNEL_CMDLINE_DEFAULTS="video=DSI-1:panel_orientation=left_side_up splash" and did sudo flash-kernel This got plymouth to rotate to the pocket display.
I used sudo plymouth-set-default-theme -l to list installed themes and sudo plymouth-set-default-theme -R <theme> to select desired theme. I settled on moonlight for now.
Edit:
Worked on classic reform on rk3588 as well. firmware-linux can be omitted for both models. I just forgot to flash-kernel at first when setting it up on pocket reform. On classic reform you can omit the part about rotation as it is native landscape so /etc/default/flash-kernel just needs to be LINUX_KERNEL_CMDLINE_DEFAULTS="splash"
I think I’m going to try to make a custom mnt logo screen where it slowly fills up with color in homage to the amiga checkmark and classic apple logos. Will post if/when complete.
I still need to align password entry box and hide progress bar until password is entered. Maybe next weekend I’ll have it in good enough condition to share.
I installed plymouth again (pocket reform, a311d) and I don’t see a stacktrace in dmesg at all, I guess we’re seeing different behavior? (this is the case even with @hardcoreufo’s kernel parameters)
Ok version 0.9. I think its good enough to share. Still can’t figure out how to hide progress bar until password is input but it looks okay at the bottom.
I’m not a developer or much of a coder, just like to tinker and this is the first thing I’ve made to share. I put links to the githubs I borrowed from at the top of the script. I think that makes it okay to share right?
Just unzip and place the folder into /usr/share/plymouth/themes then run sudo plymouth-set-default-theme -R mnt-reform.
Edit: Works on pocket too, but everything is a little large, and the logo is huge. Should just need a few tweaks to get right.
Technically, no. The authors of both projects that you borrowed from shared their work under the terms of the GPL3. If you want to do it correctly, then you have to adhere to the terms of that license if you are deriving your work from theirs. Essentially, this means that you should at some point write a blurb like this:
This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 3 as published by the Free Software Foundation.
You also must mention the other copyright owners and should add your name as well. Some guidance on how to mark your work as GPL is given here: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html
Also note, that the MNT logo is also protected by copyright but uses a different license: Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 4.0 International | Software Package Data Exchange (SPDX) You must adhere to the conditions in that one as well, which means to at least write that your derivative MNT logo is governed by the terms of that license, who the copyright holder is (MNT Research) and then add your name.