Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S268274AbUJOSXd (ORCPT ); Fri, 15 Oct 2004 14:23:33 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S268275AbUJOSXc (ORCPT ); Fri, 15 Oct 2004 14:23:32 -0400 Received: from mail.scitechsoft.com ([63.195.13.67]:40104 "EHLO mail.scitechsoft.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S268274AbUJOSVN (ORCPT ); Fri, 15 Oct 2004 14:21:13 -0400 From: "Kendall Bennett" Organization: SciTech Software, Inc. To: Alan Cox Date: Fri, 15 Oct 2004 11:20:58 -0700 MIME-Version: 1.0 Subject: Re: Generic VESA framebuffer driver and Video card BOOT? CC: KendallB@scitechsoft.com, Linux Kernel Mailing List Message-ID: <416FB29A.11731.1C46848@localhost> In-reply-to: <1097850784.9857.20.camel@localhost.localdomain> References: X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Windows (4.21c) Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Content-description: Mail message body X-Spam-Flag: NO Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1601 Lines: 41 Alan Cox wrote: > On Gwe, 2004-10-15 at 15:22, Andi Kleen wrote: > > > 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. > > It doesn't imply this at all. You set an initial mode with the BIOS > during boot up. When your initrd runs you gain the ability to flip mode > and do cool stuff - arguably it doesn't even need to be in initrd. That works great on x86, but this solution was developed for PowerPC and MIPS embedded systems development not x86 desktop systems. For those platforms you either need a boot loader that can bring up the system into graphics mode (possible with U-Boot) or to init the video right when the framebuffer console driver is brought up. >From the sound of it that might be too early to spawn a user mode process? Regards, --- Kendall Bennett Chief Executive Officer SciTech Software, Inc. Phone: (530) 894 8400 http://www.scitechsoft.com ~ SciTech SNAP - The future of device driver technology! ~ - 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/