On Tue, 25 Mar 1997, Eric Youngdale wrote:
>
> >>I'd also like to see much better boot management. The idea of an OS booting
> >>to a textual display in 1997 is ridiculous.
> >
> > No, it isn't. It's not as pretty as booting to a no-icky-text-here
> > graphical display, but it's perfectly usable. But be that as it
> > may, are you working on such a thing? I'm doing research into a
> > modification that will drop a boot picture onto the system (probably
> > the NT login banner, so dimwitted managers won't run shrieking in
> > terror at the thought of a usable OS in their hands) and would be
> > happy to drop it like a hot potato if someone else was already doing
> > the work.
>
> Actually, HPUX has a really cool display as it boots up. All
> in regular ASCII mode. It starts by putting a checklist on the
> screen, and then as various tasks are completed, it fills in the box
> with an 'OK', or a 'FAILED' depending upon what happened. This
> effectively requires the output of init to go to the log file
> so that some other utility can drive the screen. The 'FAILED' is
> in red, the OK is in either white or green (I cannot remember).
> Really nice in that it wasn't overly verbose, but you could see
> where the bootup was and you could tell at a glance whether there was
> a problem or not. There were more than 24 lines on their checklist, so
> you could use the scroll-up/scroll-down buttons to examine the entire
> thing.
>
> On the other extreme, you have AIX. On what is arguably one
> of the faster machines around, you have one of the slowest bootup
> sequences I have ever seen. It does put up a nice pretty picture
> with colored balls, however, so you aren't left to contemplate a
> blank screen.
>
> -Eric
>
>