Re: Tasks

[Stephen Borrill <netbsd%precedence.co.uk@localhost>]

On Fri, 13 Feb 2009, Andrew Doran wrote:
> - Another part is getting X to autoconfigure. From my perspective this means
>  doing a bit of research, I don't know well enough what happens with it. Is
>  X -configure smart enough these days?

Pretty much except for a few quirks.

I've put a script from one of our (my company's) projects at 
ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/misc/sborrill/xdriver

It's very dependent on the specific infrastructure around it which 
I'll mention here for reference:
- Main system is in a ramdisk embedded in the kernel (but running 
multiuser)
- Various modules such as shared libraries and X are available as 
compressed (and encrypted in our case) vnds
- rc sends all output to a log file rather than the console. Hence you'll 
see lots of > /dev/tty for printing messages to the user
- It will run with just 4 or 5 files (kernel, lib, X and gui vnds) which 
can be loaded from CD, ffs, pxeboot/tftp/http and does not need any local 
storage
- Any local storage is run in read-only mode (except when writing back 
persistent settings - I had to comment out your code to stop downgrading 
from read-write to read-only that was introduced just before 5.0)

In essence the script runs X -probeonly -configure and then post processes 
the generated Xorg.conf to determine the driver being used (which can be 
stored for future reference if there is any local storage). Certain quirks 
are applied based on experience. These include falling back to VESA in 
certain circumstances (namely DDC failing with the intel driver) and 
selecting software cursor on some chipsets. The Xorg.conf actually used 
for X is then autogenerated. The script I've uploaded is just part of 
this.

>  Can we figure out how to set the
>  keyboard layout given what we ask in sysinst? Is it worth looking at what
>  Ubuntu/Fedora do? Anyone want to add the code to sysinst? Should be simple
>  enough.

That's got to be pretty simple. What we actually do with the keyboard 
layout determined depends on how we generate the Xorg.conf

--
Stephen