Solved 13-RC3: unexpected appearance of new loader

zirias@

Developer
Not really important, but I'm a bit surprised to see the new loader look like this on my notebook:
IMG_20210320_170335.jpg

So, the FreeBSD banner is bitmap, but the logo is still ASCII art?
 
FWIW, on my desktop machine, the logo is bitmap as well, as expected. But I switched back to textmode on the desktop anyways cause otherwise, compositing with radeonkms driver was broken. And really, I don't care what the loader looks like, as long as it works ;) Was just surprised to see this strange text/bitmap mix.
 
i had the same think with BETA3, upgrading to RC2 and performing a bootloader upgrade gave me the new loader with the bitmpa logo :)
 
So, the FreeBSD banner is bitmap, but the logo is still ASCII art?
Don't know. I had bitmap logo when I had two screens and console on higher resolution (HD). When I disconnected one of the screens and console resolution dropped to 1280x1024, then logo became ASCII.
(amdgpu driver, discrete Vega 64 card)
 
i had the same think with BETA3, upgrading to RC2 and performing a bootloader upgrade gave me the new loader with the bitmpa logo :)
Well, this is RC3 (of course installed the new loader in efi) and the "funny" thing is that it isn't textmode, just this red daemon-head logo is still in ASCII art ;)
 
There have been issues on very HiRes (4k) displays. Crawl the mailing list <freebsd-hackers>. The dev had to apply some compromises/quirks to make the bootloader menu screen fit the majority of configurations out there. I guess s/he just didn't have the time yet to update the logo. OTT, I like it the way it is. Retro-style is very fashionable, e.g. we all like retro cars & bicycles & 1920'ies clothes, don't we?
 
Uhm, my notebook display is FAR from 4k, it's more of a netbook (Lenovo X121e) ;) But whatever, as I said I don't really care how it looks like, just think this "mix" is somewhat remarkable ;)
 
Set in /boot/loader.conf:
Code:
hw.vga.textmode="0"
Or
Code:
vbe_max_resolution="800x600" # Console resolution
Then you get the graphics again. Setting hw.vga.textmode to "1" will show the ASCII art.

You can change the logo by setting loader_logo, you have a choice between; orbbw, orb, fbsdbw, beastiebw, beastie, none (only "orb" currently has a snazzy graphics logo)
You can also add your own logo, look in /boot/lua/. Check the gfx-*.lua files. You can add your own by adding your own custom gfx-<name>.lua file, which can then be selected by setting loader_logo to '<name>' (the same name you used for the gfx-* file without the gfx- prefix).
 
Well, this is RC3 (of course installed the new loader in efi) and the "funny" thing is that it isn't textmode, just this red daemon-head logo is still in ASCII art ;)
Like I said I had the exact thing: FreeBSD in bitmap while the logo was in ascii
 
Looking further, there are two settings, efi_max_resolution and vbe_max_resolution, if I understood things correctly the first (efi_* is for UEFI booting, the vbe_* setting is for CSM (aka BIOS) boot. And it looks like you need at least 1024x768 for the graphical 'orb' logo to show up.
 
First lua, now bitmap when booting, a critical moment.

Are these changes of a working part of FreeBSD really necessary?
 
Setting just the hw.vga.textmode="0" on my VM didn't show the logo, but it did make the console output become very slow. Finally adding vbe_max_resolution="1024x768" made the neat logo to show up (and no console slowdown).

Will there be a new logo with each release? 😎
 
Looking further, there are two settings, efi_max_resolution and vbe_max_resolution, if I understood things correctly the first (efi_* is for UEFI booting, the vbe_* setting is for CSM (aka BIOS) boot. And it looks like you need at least 1024x768 for the graphical 'orb' logo to show up.
This is UEFI boot, so screen.textmode and the like are ignored anyways.

But the minimum required screen resolution indeed is the key. The weird thing is: If I boot loader.efi on my desktop, it already uses some higher resolution without any configuration (and shows the logo as a bitmap as well). For this notebook, I added efi_max_resolution="1366x768", which is its native display resolution, still the loader used 1024x768 instead, but now showed the logo. A side effect is that a larger font is now used on the console, this also persists after loading radeonkms.ko which finally switches to the correct 1366x768 resolution.

Just found the selection of font size is expected behavior:
Code:
           screen.font
                     Set font size for framebuffer mode.  Default font size is
                     selected based on screen resolution, to achieve terminal
                     dimensions 80x24.

But then, this doesn't seem to work on my desktop, where a much smaller font is used instead ;)
 
Considering that UEFI was introduced on real market hardware 2010 first, and that the OP's notebook is a 2011 model:
Could it be possible that the "problems" that the OP and others reported could be related to early, still immature UEFI implementations, which possibly only supported VESA modes?

So I'd be very curious whether this issue is limited to old laptops, or whether it appears also on new hardware?

You can change the logo by setting loader_logo, you have a choice between; orbbw, orb, fbsdbw, beastiebw, beastie, none (only "orb" currently has a snazzy graphics logo)
You can also add your own logo, look in /boot/lua/. Check the gfx-*.lua files. You can add your own by adding your own custom gfx-<name>.lua file, which can then be selected by setting loader_logo to '<name>' (the same name you used for the gfx-* file without the gfx- prefix).
Looking into my crystal ball, I see us soon enjoy another greeter image every day :)
 
I'm finding on an older laptop (6-8 years old I think), I get the ASCII logo. It's a Clevo barebone that I bought, at the time. On a T495 which is relatively new, I think, running AMD, I get the graphic, that is the picture of the daemon, who, I believe is supposed to be called Chuck, but I don't remember where I read that or if I'm right. I'm old, so there's lots of stuff I don't remember. The Clevo is either too old for UEFI, or perhaps it was cheaper back then, I really don't remember. At any rate, the T495 uses UEFI.
I also have a yoga2 (hi-res) running CURRENT. That is also UEFI and that has the graphic. Of course correlation doesn't equal causation, so I don't know if it's a UEFI thing, but of the three laptops I have, I get the graphic on the ones booting UEFI. The BIOS boot Clevo is also older. I'm not sure if that is the factor either.
 
Ok, today, testing something else, I did an install on VirtualBox, where the VM uses UEFI. I got an ASCII picture, not the image. So, UEFI isn't what determines what kind of image we get.
 
scottro I bet you got the FreeBSD banner bitmapped, as in my screenshot? Well then, the screen resolution is the relevant parameter. As I get from this thread, a minimum of 1024x768 is required to get the logo as bitmap as well.

What you'll have with UEFI is a framebuffer in any case. With "legacy" boot, you will be in classic VGA textmode *unless* you add screen.textmode="0".
 
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