USplash looks corrupted on PPC

[Maximilian Gerlach]

USplash works nicely on my Powerbook 12" 1Ghz, but the colors look corrupted.
(Especially compared to the x86 live CD I tried ;).)
A picture can be found here:
http://downloads.digitale-panik.de/Bilder/usplashppc1.jpg

[Matthew Garrett (mjg59)]

Yup, that's a bug. Colin?

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

Could you install fbset and show me the output of 'fbset -i'?

[Maximilian Gerlach (def306)]

root@grammaton:~# fbset -i

mode "1024x768-116"
    # D: 100.000 MHz, H: 93.985 kHz, V: 116.318 Hz
    geometry 1024 768 1024 768 8
    timings 10000 16 16 16 16 8 8
    rgba 8/0,8/0,8/0,0/0
endmode

Frame buffer device information:
    Name : OFfb NVDA,Displ
    Address : 0xa0004000
    Size : 786432
    Type : PACKED PIXELS
    Visual : STATIC PSEUDOCOLOR
    XPanStep : 0
    YPanStep : 0
    YWrapStep : 0
    LineLength : 1024
    Accelerator : No
root@grammaton:~#

[Matthew Garrett (mjg59)]

Any joy with this?

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

Maximilian's framebuffer is static pseudocolour, i.e. the palette isn't
programmable - you're stuck with whatever the hardware gives you. Unless we want
to pull clever tricks like getting the palette and trying to best-fit it to the
usplash image (which might not work very well anyway given that much of
usplash's use of colour is for anti-aliasing), I think the best option is for
usplash to give up on FB_VISUAL_STATIC_PSEUDOCOLOR framebuffers.

[Matthew Garrett (mjg59)]

I notice that we seem to be using the open firmware framebuffer - does the
nvidia framebuffer work on PPC?

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

I should imagine so, but I don't have the necessary hardware to check.

[Maximilian Gerlach (def306)]

> I should imagine so, but I don't have the necessary hardware to check.
So tell me what to do :)

[indypende (indypende-deactivatedaccount)]

i've the same problem but i can't submit no screenshots. The ubuntu colors are fuzzy! (only on usplash)

[Scott Rushforth (scott-spotman)]

This may not be only happening on PPC, but it also appears to happen on a variety of Ati x1300 - x1400 cards (maybe others).

There is a forum post on this topic in the edgy forums:
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=1560120#post1560120

Here is a screenshot of what is happening:
http://spotman.net/usplash.jpg

Thank you for any input and help! Let us know if we can assist further.

[Scott Rushforth (scott-spotman)]

Ok I just did an apt-get dist-upgrade, and rebooted and with today's usplash upgrade (9/29) it has been resolved at least on my system.

I can confirm that the 9/28 and older packages still exhibit the issue.

Thank you ubuntu dev's!

[sbriglie (sbriglie)]

I can confirm the big on my powerbook 12 1.5 ghz, nvida 5200 Go running ubuntu edgy updated as of today. I am pretty sure the problem is caused by the usage of open firmware (ofonly) framebuffer instead of rivafb framebuffer. My yaboot.conf appends the option video=rivafb to the kernel, but rivafb is compiled as an external module in the default kernel:
~# modprobe -l |grep rivafb
/lib/modules/2.6.17-10-powerpc/kernel/drivers/video/riva/rivafb.ko
So I think this module must be put into the initrd so it can be loaded upon booting or otherwise rivafb must be compiled statically into the kernel.

[Andreas Bachmann (andi-bachmann)]

Installed edgy (kubuntu) on an iMac G4, 15'' Flat Panel, with Nvidia GeForce 2MX grafic card. I can confirm, that since Dapper I can't get splash screen working. Tried different things found in the forum but no success (changing config in /etc/yaboot.conf).
When booting I see four or five boot messages then the messages are stopping (think last one is something like "loading initial ramdisk". Then nothing happens until kdm comes up.
Nothing happens means, that nothing visible happens. The system is booting completly and without a problem in the background. I'm not geek enough to say it's a bug, but it's something I realized in Dapper an in Edgy.

[Timothy Smith (tas50)]

I can confirm this on a 1.5Ghz Powerbook 12in with Feisty 12.24.06 nightly.

[Kimmo Surakka (kimmo-surakka)]

I also had the same problem in my Powerbook G4 12in. Today, I found a way to make it work.

The problem is the offb driver being built in to the kernel. It has to be disabled. Here's what I did:

1. Edited /etc/yaboot.conf and modified the per-image "append=" line to 'append="video=offb:off video=nvidiafb:flatpanel=1 splash"'
2. Ran 'sudo ybin -v'
3. Edited /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-framebuffer and changed the line "blacklist nvidiafb" to "#blacklist nvidiafb" (i.e., commented if out)
4. Ran 'sudo dpkg-reconfigure linux-image-`uname -r`'
5. Rebooted

I think that was all. I Also tried using rivafb instead of nvidiafb, and they both seem to work. This also solved the bug #35992 "brightness controls not working for 12" powerbook" in my machine. My Powerbook is a 12-inch model with 800 MHz CPU and a Nvidia display adapter.

[Eric Work (ework)]

Adding to the last comment. It almost worked but I did the following.

1. Edited /etc/yaboot.conf
changed append to, "video=offb:off video=nvidiafb quiet splash"
2. Ran 'sudo ybin -v'
3. Edited /etc/initramfs-tools/modules
added the new line, "nvidiafb noaccel=1"
4. Edited /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-framebuffer
commented out, "blacklist nvidiafb"
5. Ran 'sudo dpkg-reconfigure linux-image-`uname -r`'
6. Rebooted

This is for a 1.33 GHz 12" Powerbook G4 with an Nvidia GeForce Go5200. With these changes I can now also use the framebuffer for mac-on-linux and still have brightness controls. Of course uplash is also now shown correctly which is what brought me to this bug initially. The key changes were adding noaccel when loading the nvidiafb module and putting the nvidiafb module into initramfs.

[Daan Odijk (dodijk)]

Eric Work's solution fixed it for me to on a fresh install of Gutsy. This is the same 1.33 GHz 12" Powerbook G4 with an Nvidia GeForce Go5200.

[Ted Percival (tedp)]

On Debian, after installing the 2.6.24 kernel on my iBook G4, the usplash boot screen shows up fine.
On 2.6.22 I never got a splash screen at all.

So perhaps it is OK to consider this fixed in 2.6.24. (OTOH maybe there are too many uncontrolled variables on my system.)

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Closing as per Ted's last comment. Other reporters, please reopen this (or just yell here, and I'll do it) if you still have problems with hardy. Thank you!

[joenix (woutersj)]

I installed the 2.6.24-12-powerpc from hardy on a gutsy install, but that didn't solve the issue. The framebuffer is still handled by OpenFirmwareFB.
I looked at the kernel configurations and the relevant framebuffer settings seem to be the same as in gutsy. Maybe Debian is changing something there that we are not.
Then I tried the suggestion from Eric Work. That also didn't work for me. After that I tried rivafb in stead of nvidiafb. Now the framebuffer is handled by rivafb and I can change the lcd brightness level, which I couldn't do before. However, usplash still doesn't work.

[franz (franz-pv)]

Tried the method posted above on a fresh install of Hardy Heron on a 12" Powerbook (1.5 GHz) and I got a good and a bad result.
Good: The brightness keys are now working.
Bad: Usplash ain't showing at all, not even those wrong colors, justa a black screen.