Subject: Re: Ultra 5 X11
To: Eduardo Horvath <eeh@NetBSD.org>
From: Michael <macallan18@earthlink.net>
List: port-sparc
Date: 02/10/2005 12:08:59
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Hello,

> In practice, things start to break down if you do that.  First of all,
> OBP only initializes the screen if it's the console device.  But that
> shouldn't really be a problem since the machfb driver should be smart
> enough to initialize the framebuffer itself.
In theory it should set up something usable, the question is if video 
memory and registers would still be mmap()able through /dev/ttyE0.

>  A bigger issue is that
> the last time I tried it wscons is not capable of functioning if it's
> not the console.  As far as I'm concerned, that's a major flaw in
> wscons.  If you could get wscons to attach properly and not panic the
> machine, you should then be able to tell the X server to attach to
> the wscons display and run your session there.
I'm pretty sure /dev/ttyE0 is hardcoded into XFree.

> Finally, if the machfb driver is capable of initializing the display
> it should also be capable of taking over the console from the X server.
> That it doesn't should be considered a bug.
Which console? XFree doesn't tell wscons what it does to the video 
hardware so wscons has no way to print anything meaningful on the 
screen as long as XFree is running. Handing it back when the Xserver 
exits works fine.

have fun
Michael
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