On Wed, Dec 27, 2006 at 04:46:51AM +0300, Valeriy E. Ushakov wrote:
> > 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.
> 
> I agree with Thor here.  I have little clue about vga text mode, but
> wscons distinguishes (WSDISPLAYIO_SMODE) between mapped and emulated
> (i.e. text console) modes.  Just treat vga text mode as a peculiar
> "acceleration" for the emulated mode and switch to the framebuffer for
> the mapped mode.

can multiple drivers be attached to the same wsdisplay device, with
wscons handling the passoff between them?  IE let vga handle textmode,
then replace it with vesafb when the appropriate ioctl is done on
wsdisplay?

> It makes life easier for the driver author to always run in the same
> framebuffer mode, so that switching to the wscons mapped mode in the
> driver is basically a no-op, but that's a weak excuse :)

sounds like the goal is to have a single VESA driver which can flip
between text and graphics modes within a single driver.  I'll poke at
it, but really my goal is faster graphics access, which will let me
jettison full-blown X in favor of the much more svelte nano-X.

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