About the XPM image files used for the Drive Encryption preboot screens
Drive Encryption
preboot screens Symantec Endpoint Encryption Management Server
lets you add custom background images for the Drive Encryption
preboot startup and login screens. Image specifications
Create the custom background images according to the following specifications:
- XPM files only
- Image size of 640x480
- Palette of 14 colors only. You do not have to use all 14 colors in the image
- 8-bit RGB only. You can verify that you are using 8-bit RGB by looking at the XPM header using a text editor: 8-bit values appear as one hex triplet (for example, #285A83); 16-bit values appear as two hex triplets (for example, #28285A5A8383).
Supported graphics applications
The graphics applications that support the XPM file format include:
- Windows: Blaze ImgConvert
- Mac OS X: GIMP
- UNIX or Linux: FreeBSD
- Linux: the Convert command
Best practices for color compression
Since the image is compressed when you upload it to
Symantec Endpoint Encryption Management Server
, use images with few colors. For example, corporate logos using only one or two colors compress to the correct size. If you upload a highly colored image such as a photograph, the image cannot compress small enough and cannot be used. If your image does not compress, no error message appears, but the image does not appear at the Drive Encryption
login screen. On systems running Mac OS X
If you use Graphic Converter on a computer running Mac OS X, changes to your color palette may occur. As when using any graphics tool, verify that the final image is what you had intended.
Editing XPM files with text editors
If you use a text editor to modify your XPM file, ensure that any 16-bit hexadecimal values are modified to 8-bit in the colors section of the file. To modify 16-bit hexadecimal values to 8-bit, drop the second hex pair so that you end up with a hex triplet. For example, from #818184848C8C, remove the second triplet (848C8C) so that you end up with #818184.
References
For more information about XPM files, see the Wikipedia entry X PixMap (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_PixMap).