As of 2.6.8-gentoo, the bootsplash patch is no longer included in gentoo-dev-sources. This should have stayed masked until a replacement was found, or the patch should have been forward-ported. As of now the stable gentoo-dev-sources breaks the systems of bootsplash users and will not boot correctly, if at all. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Emerge gentoo-dev-sources 2. Configure, build, install 3. Reboot Actual Results: Doesn't boot. Expected Results: A functional computer.
Why would the machine stop working? This doesn't happen to me at all. Anyway, we don't have a 2.6.8 bootsplash patch yet, sorry.
Here is a 2.6.8.1 patch. http://www.bootsplash.de/files/bootsplash-3.1.4-sp3-2.6.8.1.diff
gentoo-dev-sources-2.6.8-r1 contains a bootsplash replacement - fbsplash. The new patch is documented and described on http://dev.gentoo.org/~spock/. An ebuild for userspace fbsplash utilities can be found at http://dev.gentoo.org/~spock/projects/gensplash/ (it will be added to Portage as soon as a bunch of changes gets integrated into rc-scripts). I'm sorry for any inconvenience this may be causing. Also note that the lack of bootsplash in the kernel will definitely not prevent your system from booting. If you can't boot with 2.6.8-r1, it's probably caused by smth else.
Splashutils are now in Portage, I'm marking this bug as WONTFIX for now.