Re: NetBSD vs. VirtualBox

[mlelstv%serpens.de@localhost (Michael van Elst)]

woods%planix.ca@localhost ("Greg A. Woods") writes:

>So given that genfb(4) and other raster display drivers rely on
>rasops(9) to "fill in the gaps" left by not having hardware to do
>character manipulations, wouldn't it make sense for rasops(9) to also
>support some or all or more than all of the basic "screen types"
>provided by the likes of vga(4)?  Those were widely used by some of us!

You cannot just use the "widely used screen types" on arbitrary displays,
and where that is possible, you need a scalable font engine in the kernel.


>I guess it is more disconcerting for the likes of virtual machines where
>the display emulation may change from one boot to another but there's no
>current built-in and easy way to inform wscons userland configurations
>of such changes.

Same is true for any other "hardware" changes.

Saying that, there are a couple of parameters in wscons that aren't
really exposed to userland or where handling could be improved.



>Also, BTW, I see in the NetBSD Guide, in the chapter on virtualization,
>that the vesa command should work in /boot.cfg.  However I can't get
>this to work, no matter what form of argument I give it, and no matter
>where I put it in /boot.cfg.  Indeed even a "vesa list" command in
>/boot.cfg doesn't seem to do anything either.  I can't get the "gop"
>command to work from /boot.cfg in my UEFI-booting UTM/QEMU VM either.

In the BIOS bootloader the vesa command calls the VESA BIOS.
In the UEFI bootloader The gop command calls the UEFI GOP driver.

Either should work the same, whether in boot.cfg or used interactively,
but obviously they do different things.

One possible solution would be to extend the boot.cfg language with
conditionals and variables. But before doing that, I'd rather start
with a more common boot environment for all the archs including the
way of passing boot parameters.

For your specific problem, you could use a different boot.cfg when
booting with UEFI. The EFI bootloader will load the file from
ESP:/efi/netbsd/boot.cfg when present, instead of loading it from
the root partition.