boot.img: deeper customization...

[gizmu]

I want to customize boot process, so I had mounted boot.img. I've succesfully customized LOGO16 and SYSLINUX.CFG. When I opened F2 and BOOT.MSG files I saw they are not plain text file as syslinux.cfg. As exemple F2 appears like:

1712ÚÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ¿³ 1a>>> 1eCHEATCODES FOR KNOPPIX V3.2 (hit F1 to get back to the main screen) 1a<<<12 ³ÀÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÙ17
1bThe KNOPPIX autoconfiguration scripts accept the following kernel options17

and so on. I don't want to mess up anything so: how do I have to treat these strange characters ???

Second question: where can I find or generate a proper keyboard file ??? How can I set it as default instead of german.kbd one ?

Third: Where can I customize messages that comes after boot process ?? I mean "Welcome to Knoppix Live CD" and so on...

Thank you !

[Ghandalfar]

1. use hex editor

2. look at /etc/init.d/knx-autoconfig

3. I think you must change kernel for that - look in /usr/src/

[gizmu]

1. use hex editor

2. look at /etc/init.d/knx-autoconfig

3. I think you must change kernel for that - look in /usr/src/

1. It's the same !
2. I'm referring to keyboard file that comes with boot.img. Why should I look at /etc/init.d/knx-autoconfig ?
3. This means recompile kernel or something like this ??? GULP!

Bye !

[Ghandalfar]

1. Yes, just change the text around those hex numbers that mean color (see appendix)

2. Sorry.

3. I'm afraid so.

Appendix:
from syslinux doc file:

++++ DISPLAY FILE FORMAT ++++

DISPLAY and function-key help files are text files in either DOS or UNIX
format (with or without <CR>). In addition, the following special codes
are interpreted:

<FF> <FF> = <Ctrl-L> = ASCII 12
Clear the screen, home the cursor. Note that the screen is
filled with the current display color.

<SI><bg><fg> <SI> = <Ctrl-O> = ASCII 15
Set the display colors to the specified background and
foreground colors, where <bg> and <fg> are hex digits,
corresponding to the standard PC display attributes:

0 = black 8 = dark grey
1 = dark blue 9 = bright blue
2 = dark green a = bright green
3 = dark cyan b = bright cyan
4 = dark red c = bright red
5 = dark purple d = bright purple
6 = brown e = yellow
7 = light grey f = white

Picking a bright color (8-f) for the background results in the
corresponding dark color (0-7), with the foreground flashing.

Colors are not visible over the serial console.

<CAN>filename<newline> <CAN> = <Ctrl-X> = ASCII 24
If a VGA display is present, enter graphics mode and display
the graphic included in the specified file. The file format
is an ad hoc format called LSS16; the included Perl program
"ppmtolss16" can be used to produce these images. This Perl
program also includes the file format specification.

The image is displayed in 640x480 16-color mode. Once in
graphics mode, the display attributes (set by <SI> code
sequences) work slightly differently: the background color is
ignored, and the foreground colors are the 16 colors specified
in the image file. For that reason, ppmtolss16 allows you to
specify that certain colors should be assigned to specific
color indicies.

Color indicies 0 and 7, in particular, should be chosen with
care: 0 is the background color, and 7 is the color used for
the text printed by SYSLINUX itself.

[i] [i] = <Ctrl-Y> = ASCII 25
If we are currently in graphics mode, return to text mode.

<DLE>..<ETB> <Ctrl-P>..<Ctrl-W> = ASCII 16-23
These codes can be used to select which modes to print a
certain part of the message file in. Each of these control
characters select a specific set of modes (text screen,
graphics screen, serial port) for which the output is actually
displayed:

Character Text Graph Serial
------------------------------------------------------
<DLE> = <Ctrl-P> = ASCII 16 No No No
<DC1> = <Ctrl-Q> = ASCII 17 Yes No No
<DC2> = <Ctrl-R> = ASCII 18 No Yes No
<DC3> = <Ctrl-S> = ASCII 19 Yes Yes No
<DC4> = <Ctrl-T> = ASCII 20 No No Yes
<NAK> = <Ctrl-U> = ASCII 21 Yes No Yes
<SYN> = <Ctrl-V> = ASCII 22 No Yes Yes
<ETB> = <Ctrl-W> = ASCII 23 Yes Yes Yes

For example:

<DC1>Text mode<DC2>Graphics mode<DC4>Serial port<ETB>

... will actually print out which mode the console is in!

<SUB> <SUB> = <Ctrl-Z> = ASCII 26
End of file (DOS convention).

[gizmu]

ok, thank you !

[Krezip]

I also want to edit that F2 screen, is there really no editor whom can give me a screen preview?



There must be one out there!

Xilinx

[nayr]

apt-get install tetradraw

tetradraw is an easy to use drawing utility that gives you an ease access to
the high characters like smileys, card signs and the well known single and
double frame line characters but much more. Also the changing of foreground
and background colors is not hard to do.
.
tetraview is the viewer for such produced images.

You have to use it from a terminal, not an emulated terminal (like xterm or konsole)