>>From the keyboard of Kenneth Stailey:

>> When X is running and I get a panic the video does not go back to text
>> mode.

>There is a discussion on this subject on the freebsd-hackers list currently.
>A short term solution would be to disable DDB in case an X server is running
>and dump to disk immediately.
>
>Another solution would be (if it were possible) to call the BIOS to re-init
>the text mode, but as Thomas Roell pointed out, there are still some problems
>with this approach.
>
>The only solution i see right now is to use a serial console.

PCVT seems to know how to get the video back in the right mode (it
does so when you switch to a text vt).  I assume pccons must know a
way to re-init text mode also, since it does so when you leave X.

Why can't we make something like a RestoreTTY() call or something like
that in the various console drivers that ddb can call (architectures
that don't need/want it could just return immediately)?  Right as ddb
is being called from a crash, one of its first tasks can be to call
RestoreTTY(), inside the currently active console driver.

It seems pretty simple to me, but I'm probably being naive about some
aspect here.  (And I don't claim to understand the inner workings of
these things -- I'd just like this functionality.)

One last hurdle being that you can't run a serial console and virtual
terminals at the same time.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Michael L. VanLoon                                 michaelv@HeadCandy.com
       --<  Free your mind and your machine -- NetBSD free un*x  >--
     NetBSD working ports: 386+PC, Mac, Amiga, HP300, Sun3, Sun4, PC532,
                           DEC pmax (MIPS R2k/3k), DEC/AXP (Alpha)
     NetBSD ports in progress: VAX and others...
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