On Tue, Dec 26, 2006 at 08:33:35PM -0500, Thor Lancelot Simon wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 25, 2006 at 10:04:01PM -0800, Aaron J. Grier wrote:
> > On Thu, Dec 21, 2006 at 04:31:24PM -0500, Thor Lancelot Simon wrote:
> > > The problem is, with wscons attached to vesafb, the console is
> > > unusuably slow; with wscons attached to vga, and a direct-
> > > hardware-access X server, X11 is unsafe.
> > 
> > so pick your poison.
> 
> That's an incredibly bogus non-answer.

I'll attempt to be more precise.  you have two choices for now:

1) safe graphics access via kernel vesafb, and slow text rendering
2) unsafe graphics access via direct X access, and fast text rendering

to my knowledge, the combination of safe graphics access and fast text
rendering does not currently exist on i386.

> We already have wscons drivers that provide accellerated text
> rendering using hardware text modes while also providing usable-by-X
> frame buffers.

NetBSD does?

I was under the assumption that there is no wscons driver which provides
both accelerated text mode _and_ safe framebuffer access, hence the
"safety vs speed" choice faced at the moment.

> What exactly is the excuse why vesafb must (according to you, and
> evidently Michael too) not work that way?  The fact that it can't is
> responsible for a major longstanding security hole in the i386 port.

the "fb" in "vesafb" stands for framebuffer, which by definition is
_not_ a text mode.

there exist VESA text modes; perhaps this is confusing you?

-- 
  Aaron J. Grier | "Not your ordinary poofy goof." | agrier@poofygoof.com
              "silly brewer, saaz are for pils!"  --  virt