Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S267850AbUJOOYz (ORCPT ); Fri, 15 Oct 2004 10:24:55 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S267798AbUJOOYy (ORCPT ); Fri, 15 Oct 2004 10:24:54 -0400 Received: from zero.aec.at ([193.170.194.10]:33296 "EHLO zero.aec.at") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S267850AbUJOOXA (ORCPT ); Fri, 15 Oct 2004 10:23:00 -0400 To: Alan Cox cc: KendallB@scitechsoft.com, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: Generic VESA framebuffer driver and Video card BOOT? References: <2Pkf0-42m-11@gated-at.bofh.it> <2PncW-6j9-19@gated-at.bofh.it> <2PncW-6j9-21@gated-at.bofh.it> <20030401205016$5cc4@gated-at.bofh.it> <20030401205016$63f7@gated-at.bofh.it> <20030424075011$4028@gated-at.bofh.it> <1ewKr-2Kh-41@gated-at.bofh.it> <1bucs-57R-33@gated-at.bofh.it> <2PncW-6j9-23@gated-at.bofh.it> <20030423094012$4166@gated-at.bofh.it> <2PncW-6j9-17@gated-at.bofh.it> <2PAMY-7Ir-21@gated-at.bofh.it> From: Andi Kleen Date: Fri, 15 Oct 2004 16:22:56 +0200 In-Reply-To: <2PAMY-7Ir-21@gated-at.bofh.it> (Alan Cox's message of "Fri, 15 Oct 2004 16:00:20 +0200") Message-ID: User-Agent: Gnus/5.110003 (No Gnus v0.3) Emacs/21.2 (gnu/linux) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1292 Lines: 30 Alan Cox writes: > On Iau, 2004-10-14 at 21:46, Kendall Bennett wrote: >> a way to spawn a user mode process that early in the boot sequence (it >> would have to come from the initrd image I expect) then the only option >> is to compile it into the kernel. > > There is exactly that in 2.6 - the hotplug interfaces allow the kernel > to fire off userspace programs. Jon Smirl (who you should definitely > talk to about this stuff) has been hammering out a design for moving > almost all the mode switching into user space for kernel video. The problem is that this would imply that the console would only work after user space is running. Even with initrd that's quite late. The only way I see to make that fly would be a very good early console implementation, otherwise tracking down any problems will be hell (how do you display "panic no rootfs found" without console?) And writing a good early console implementation would have all the same problems as the current one. So I can see Kendall's point. -Andi - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/