Why splash screens don't work...

[Sascha Wildner <saw@xxxxxxxxx>]

Dear DFly community,

splash screens don't work (at least on my machine, no matter what I 
try). This has been reported in d.bugs before by Jörg Anslik. After two 
weeks or so of investigation I think I can tell why. Please correct any 
bugs in my argumentation.

The problem with the current setup is that the loader does not seem to 
call the event handler function of splash_{bmp,pcx}.ko with the MOD_LOAD 
argument (see the thread 'loader question' from yesterday; also see 
splashreg.h for the handler definition). This results in 
splash_register() never being called and the global integer 'decoders' 
(both from splash.c) staying 0. The first call to the syscons function 
scinit() (done via cninit() from init386() right at the beginning of the 
kernel) should normally pop up the splash screen but it can't since no 
decoders are registered. It nevertheless sets the SC_INIT_DONE flag 
resulting in subsequent calls to scinit() no longer executing the splash 
screen part.

I'm a bit unsure about the loader part (even more so as Matt stated that 
the loader _does_ call the event handler function) but this is the only 
explanation that matches all my observations. Perhaps I've overlooked 
something. Please comment.

Regards,
Sascha

--
http://yoyodyne.ath.cx