In order for fbsplash or fbcondecor to be activated during early stages of 
the boot-up process, the kernel has to get access to the fbcondecor_helper 
program and theme data files. There are several ways to make this happen.

1. Initramfs

Initramfs is a part of the early-userspace concept, the goal of which is to
make it possible to use userspace programs very soon after the system starts
booting. Initramfs is described in detail in:
<kernel>/Documentation/early-userspace/

An initramfs image is basically a gzipped cpio archive. The contents of
this archive are used by the kernel to populate a temporary root filesystem
which is used before the main root filesystem is mounted.

An initramfs image can be either compiled directly into the kernel, or used
as an initrd.

To make your initramfs useful for fbcondecor, you need to put two things into
it: the fbcondecor helper and a theme (config files + pics). The fbcondecor helper
should be located at /sbin/fbcondecor_helper, as usual. You also have to make
sure that the appropriate mount points exist in the image (/sys, /dev).
If you want to save some memory and you aren't planning to use
all available resolutions, you'd probably want to copy the config file and
the background pics only for the one resolution you use.

If you're making your own initramfs images, you already know what to do. If
you aren't, splashutils comes with a script that will make your life a little
easier. The script is called splash_geninitramfs. It has options to
generate (-g), append (-a) or copy (-c) the necessary files where they should
be. Type `splash_geninitramfs --help` for more info. You will usually want
to use it in a way similar to the one presented below:

# splash_geninitramfs -g /boot/initrd-fbsplash -r 1024x768 default

This will generate an initramfs with the theme 'default' for resolution
1024x768.

If you want to use the created initramfs image as an initrd, all you have
to do then is make sure your kernel gets a initrd=/boot/initrd-fbsplash
parameter.

If you want to compile the initramfs image into the kernel, you should
place it in /usr/src/<kernel>/usr/initramfs_data.cpio.gz and rebuild
your kernel (make bzImage). Doing a `touch usr/initramfs_data.cpio.gz`
before rebuilding the bzImage might be sometimes necessary to prevent the
kernel from overwriting your initramfs image with its own default image.

2. What about the good old initrds?

Initrds aren't of much use for fbcondecor as their contents aren't directly
accessible (ie. mounted) at the time fbcon is initialized.

It's theoretically possible to store the theme data in a classical initrd
and still make use of it, though. You would have to create a wrapper
/sbin/fbcondecor_helper script/program that would mount initrd.image, copy
the theme data to the rootfs and then call the real fbcondecor_helper. As far
as I know, it has never been tried so far.

--
  Written by Michal Januszewski <spock@gentoo.org>

