[docs] Add man page

It explains the basic concepts of plymouth and the usage of tools to be
used to setup it.

4 files changed, 66 insertions, 1 deletions

diff --git a/Makefile.am b/Makefile.am
index 5c35769f..6d1a9223 100644
--- a/Makefile.am
+++ b/Makefile.am
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-SUBDIRS = src themes images scripts
+SUBDIRS = src themes images scripts man
 DISTCHECK_CONFIGURE_FLAGS = --disable-tests --without-system-root-install
 
 EXTRA_DIST = ChangeLog                                                         \
diff --git a/configure.ac b/configure.ac
index e6294b9b..5cd5ec7e 100644
--- a/configure.ac
+++ b/configure.ac
@@ -243,4 +243,5 @@ AC_OUTPUT([Makefile
            themes/script/Makefile
            images/Makefile
            scripts/Makefile
+	   man/Makefile
 ])
diff --git a/man/Makefile.am b/man/Makefile.am
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..24492908
--- /dev/null
+++ b/man/Makefile.am
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+dist_man_MANS = plymouth.8
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/man/plymouth.8 b/man/plymouth.8
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..493de72d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/man/plymouth.8
@@ -0,0 +1,63 @@
+\"                                      Hey, EMACS: -*- nroff -*-
+.TH PLYMOUTH 8 "December 15, 2009"
+.SH NAME
+plymouth \- A graphical boot system and logger
+.SH SYNOPSIS
+.B plymouth-set-default-theme
+.RI [ options ] " \<theme\>"
+.SH DESCRIPTION
+\fBplymouth\fP is a a graphical boot system for Linux which takes advantage of the kernel-based
+mode setting (KMS) available for modern graphic cards to provide a seamless, flickerfree
+and attractive boot screen. It supercedes the Red Hat graphical boot manager (RHGB) on Fedora
+and Red Hat systems and replaces usplash with xplash on Ubuntu and Debian. It allows
+to choose between various, static or animated graphical themes to spruce up the
+startup and avoid the noise generated by the vast amount of kernel messages while
+the machine boots into X. On systems where kernel-based mode setting is not available,
+plymouth falls back to a text mode boot screen which provides a simple progress bar
+to provide feedback during boot.
+.PP
+To configure plymouth, that is to choose and install the preferred boot theme, the
+user has to invoke \fBplymouth-set-default-theme\fP. It changes the configuration
+to the new theme and also performs the necessary regeneration of the initial ramdisk
+(initrd) since plymouth is loaded from the boot loader from the initrd
+prior to the mounting of the root filesystem. The options available to this
+script are explained in the \fBOPTIONS\fP paragraph.
+.PP
+In order for plymouth to be loaded during boot, the option `rhgb' must be provided
+at the kernel command line. Depending on your version of GRUB (1 or 2), this
+involves editing the files menu.lst or grub.cfg in your default grub directory
+or editing a special grub configuration file in /etc, followed by invoking
+something like `update-grub'.
+.SH OPTIONS
+plymouth-set-default-theme follows the usual GNU command line syntax, with long
+options starting with two dashes (`-') and short variants of each of them.
+.TP
+.B \-h, \-\-help
+Show summary of options.
+.TP
+\" .B \-v, \-\-version
+\" Show version of program.
+.TP
+.B \-l, \-\-list
+List available themes.
+.TP
+.B \-r, \-\-reset
+Reset to default theme.
+.TP
+.B \-R, \-\-rebuild\-initrd
+Rebuild initrd (necessary after changing theme).
+.TP
+.B \<theme-name\>
+Name of new theme to use. If you want to see which themes are available, invoke the script with just \-\-list.
+.PP
+If plymouth-set-default-theme is invoked with no options or parameters, it shows the currently selected theme
+by default. This output is used by the helper scripts `plymouth-generate-initrd' and `plymouth-update-initrd'
+to set the proper theme in the initial ramdisk.
+.SH SEE ALSO
+.BR grub (8)
+.br
+.SH AUTHOR
+plymouth was written by Kristian Høgsberg <krh@redhat.com>, Ray Strode <halfline@gmail.com> and
+Peter Jones <pjones@redhat.com>. It can be downloaded here: <http://cgit.freedesktop.org/plymouth/>.
+.PP
+This manual page was written by Adrian Glaubitz <glaubitz@physik.fu-berlin.de>.