Hi Thomas, On Monday, 27 October 2025 at 13:35:31 Thomas Zimmermann <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Francenso, Maxime, > > Am 27.10.25 um 11:09 schrieb Maxime Ripard: > > Hi, > > > > On Mon, Oct 27, 2025 at 12:03:00AM +0100, Francesco Valla wrote: > >> this patchset adds a new DRM client offering splash functionalities, > >> able to draw to screen: > >> > >> - a colored background; > > So, I like that part, and we were recently discussing about this. > > The panic screen has configurable foreground/background colors. Maybe we > can harmonize these settings. >
Maybe, but probably the panic colors would typically be much more vibrant than splash ones. > > > >> - a single-line text message, which can be set through sysfs or > >> directly from the kernel command line; > > Put it into the kernel config. > > >> - a very simple progress bar, which can be driven through sysfs; > > Once you have options to control these settings from user space, you > should do it in user space entirely. As Maxime suggested, please improve > plymouth for anything with animation. > On this I can agree, see my reply to Maxime. > >> - a static image (optional). > > Board vendors often provide an image, see /sys/firmware/acpi/bgrt/. This > is a candidate for display, or the penguin or a custom image. Please > make it configurable by Kconfig. Again, if you need policy and > heuristics for deciding what to display, you better do this in user space. > I'm not under ACPI/UEFI typically, and the concept for this patch was not developed on such system. But I'll take a look! > > But there's no reason to have all that in the kernel, and we already > > have userspace components to do so (plymouth being the main "mainstream" > > one). > > > >> Once compiled inside the kernel, the client can be enabled through the > >> command line specifying the drm_client_lib.active=splash parameter. > >> > >> == Motivation == > >> > >> The motivation behind this work is to offer to embedded system > >> developers a new path for a simple activation of the display(s) > >> connected to their system, with the following usecases: > >> > >> - bootsplash - possibly displaying even before init; > >> - early activation of the display pipeline, in particular whenever one > >> component of the pipeline (e.g.: a panel) takes a non-negligible > >> time to initialize; > >> - recovery systems, where the splash client can offer a simple feedback > >> for unattended recovery tasks; > >> - update systems, where the splash client can offer a simple feedback > >> for unattended update tasks. > > If plymouth cannot be used by embedded systems for some reason, then you > > should work on a plymouth alternative. > > Agreed. With an updater running in user space, that process should also > manage the display update. No need for this in the kernel. > > > > >> While the first seems the most obvious one, it was the second that acted > >> as the driver, as in the past I had to implement a ugly workaround using > >> a systemd generator to kickstart the initialization of a display and > >> shave ~400ms of boot time. > >> > >> The last 2 usecase, instead, are the reason I dropped the "boot" part > >> from bootsplash. > >> > >> == Implementation details == > >> > >> The design is quite simple, with a kernel thread doing the heavylifting > >> for the rendering part and some locking to protect interactions with it. > >> > >> The splash image is loaded using the firmware framework, with the client > >> expecting to find a binary dump having the right dimensions (width and > >> height) and FOURCC format for each modeset. Given a 1920x1080 RGB888 > >> modeset, the client will for example search for a firmware named: > >> > >> drm_splash_1920x1080_RG24.raw > >> > >> If the firmware cannot be loaded directly, the NOUEVENT sysfs fallback > >> mechanism is used to let userspace load the appropriate image. > >> > >> == Testing == > >> > >> Testing was done on qemu (both with vkms and bochs drivers), on a HDMI > >> display connected to a Beagleplay and on a ILI9341 SPI display connected > >> to a i.MX93 FRDM board. All these platforms revealed different > >> weaknesses that were hopefully removed. > >> > >> == Open points / issues == > >> > >> The reason for this being an RFC is that there are several open points: > >> > >> - Support for tiled connectors should be there, but has not been > >> tested. Any idea on how to test it? > > Did you mean tiled formats? > > > >> - I'm not entirely convinced that using the firmware framework to load > >> the images is the right path. The idea behind it was to re-use the > >> compressed firmware support, but then I discovered it is not there > >> for built-in firmware. > > Yeah, firmware loading for this has a few issues (being tedious to setup > > for when built-in being one). I think just going the fbdev penguin road > > is a better choice: you provide the path, and it's embedded in the > > kernel directly. > > > >> - Again on the firmware loading: CONFIG_LOADPIN would interfere with > >> sysfs loading. > >> - And again: FW_ACTION_NOUEVENT only has one user inside the kernel, > >> leading me to think it is de-facto deprecated. And still, uevents > >> for firmware loading seem frowned upon these days... > >> - Generating binary dumps for... basically any format is not so > >> straightforward. I crafted a Python tool with AI help which seems > >> to work quite well, but I honestly did not yet understood which is > >> the policy for AI-generated code inside the kernel, so it is not > >> included in this patch set. All client code is genuine, though. > > BMP is simple enough to support so we should probably use that instead > > of a custom format. > > file /sys/firmware/acpi/bgrt/image > /sys/firmware/acpi/bgrt/image: PC bitmap, Windows 3.x format, 768 x 256 > x 24, image size 589824, cbSize 589878, bits offset 54 > > That should probably be the format for now unless your firmware uses > something else natively. Code for reading a BMP file can be found in the > efifb driver. [1] > > [1] > https://elixir.bootlin.com/linux/v6.17.5/source/drivers/video/fbdev/efifb.c#L24 > When I started working on the patch I was not able to find this BMP decoder, I only found the PPM one from the bootup logo. I'll take a look here too. > Apart from the criticism for complexity, I do like the idea of having a > splash screen. > > Best regards > Thomas > > > > > Maxime > > Thank you! Best regards, Francesco
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