Cursor appears at top left in framebuffer graphics

Bug #502509 reported by Luke
6
This bug affects 1 person
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
plymouth (Ubuntu)
Fix Released
Medium
Unassigned

Bug Description

Binary package hint: plymouth

  When plymouth starts with forced framebuffer graphics and a graphical theme like solar, a cursor appears at the top left corner of the screen, in a one row by one column black box.

This cursor initially does nothing, the password box works(except for prompting)-until fsck runs. Then text appears, cutting through the splash only in the space taken by the text, blacked out lines appearing with the text inside. I do not consider the text a bug, but the cursor at top left while the password box is up is a distraction to an unknowing user, who may expect feedback there and not from the box. The password box should be the dominant draw to the eye when it is up, a spurious cursor should not be.

The text rendered when fsck runs may be related to the "mountall cannot connect to plymouth" bug. Interestingly, the small stars in the "solar" theme are still rendered, even though the blue background is blacked out in spaces containing the letters and spaces of the text lines, implying that only the rendering of the background is being blocked.

I am using Ubuntu Lucid with plymouth 0.8~-6 , the "solar"theme with a replaced logo, and forced framebuffer graphics. The framebuffer boot graphics are by necessity on my AMD Phenom X4/nvidia 6600LE machine and by choice on the MSI Wind 100, for reasons given below. The nvidia requires vga=(a mode) on the boot command line and the old Jaunty framebuffer script in the initramfs, the MSI wind requires neither, even without the dri rendering engine which also works there. Same bug on both machines, unless dri rendering is used on the MSI-that stops the text and cursor breakthrough.

With dri graphics on the MSI Wind 100, the corner cursor does not appear, but plymouth will then exit entirely to the console when fsck runs, so I comment out the dri driver in the initramfs hook on that machine to use the framebuffer rendering. This holds most of the splash up(except the space the text takes) until the desktop appears on the netbook.

 Letting the text display but keeping the background from being disrupted would make a verbose/graphical mode(which I like), so a way to turn the console the same color as the background would be bugfix enough for the text-and would nearly hide that cursor as well.

Changed in plymouth (Ubuntu):
status: New → Triaged
importance: Undecided → Medium
Revision history for this message
Launchpad Janitor (janitor) wrote :
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This bug was fixed in the package plymouth - 0.8.0~-13

---------------
plymouth (0.8.0~-13) lucid; urgency=low

  [ Steve Langasek ]
  * Don't attach /proc/cmdline to apport reports, this is already in the
    standard info that gets collected...

  [ Alberto Milone ]
  * ubuntu_logo theme:
    - New logo from Otto Greenslade.
    - Switch off dots starting from the ones on the left instead of
      switching them off all at once.

  [ Scott James Remnant ]
  * Move the Ubuntu logo up as discussed with Otto, this makes the mouse
    cursor appear between the logo and dots and solves the optical illusion
    of the logo being too low. LP: #535014.
  * Don't include message about disk checks, which can come from mountall.
  * Drop the rc script splash functions, we don't want the SysV-rc compat
    stuff messing around with the splash screen - this can be entirely
    managed by Upstart now. LP: #528787, #537262.

  * Plymouth Fix Mega Patch:
    - This hasn't yet been broken up into enough bits to send upstream, and
      doesn't *quite* address all the issues yet, but it's a major step.

    - Rewrite the VT handling, rather than abusing /dev/tty0 keep all VT
      operations on the actual VT (tty7), this avoids issues where we set
      the graphics mode of the wrong VT or put the wrong VT into VT_PROCESS
      mode. LP: #520460, #522598, #526321, #533135
    - Don't attempt VT switch when using non-VT consoles.
    - Make VT mandatory for renderer plugins, so we fallback gracefully to
      text when the console is not a VT. LP: #516825, #527083.
    - Restore VT when finished displaying the splash unless plymouth quit
      is called with --retain-splash. LP: #506297.
    - Activate VT from text and details plugins, rather than haphardly in
      the main code, this means the textual boot is also on VT7.
      LP: #518352, #520122.
    - Add a --has-active-vt command that can let gdm inquire whether it
      should reuse Plymouth's VT; fixes the issue where Plymouth has no
      visible splash screen and X ends up on VT1. LP: #519641, #533572.

    - Don't open terminal device in X11, fixes the issue where X will crash
      when debugging plugins using the X11 renderer.
    - Add --tty option to plymouthd for debugging when X is running and
      thus using an alternate VT.

    - Improve deactivate command so that the terminal is no longer watched
      for keyboard input, session is closed, etc. LP: #528787, #531650.
    - Ignore mode changes while deactivated, otherwise we can end up
      resetting the VT back into text mode while X is starting up.
      LP: #523788, #502509.

    - Fix races with simultaneous quit and deactivate commands, or multiples
      of those commands.
    - Ignore --show-splash, --hide-splash, etc. commands while deactivated.
    - Add reactivate command for testing purposes.

    - Don't scan out drm buffer contents to fbcon when not called with
      quit --retain-splash. LP: #527180.

    - Avoid resetting the terminal to unbuffered mode on every write, this
      results in setting X's VT into raw mode and results in the X server
      crashing on key presses. LP: #532047, #534861, #519460, #520...

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Changed in plymouth (Ubuntu):
status: Triaged → Fix Released
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