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SubjectRe: Fixes for vgafb on 2.1.107


On Mon, 29 Jun 1998, Alan Cox wrote:
>
> Similary for an awkward platform you can do the console init and in
> that init defer the setup or do minimal setup. Thus for example you
> can do
>
> console_init
> no hardware yet no clues - use the sun PROM, mac bootup
> console or the PC text mode

Exactly. Almost every machine has _some_ kind of console mode at bootup,
because usually the BIOS (or equivalent - PROM, ARC) has already
initialized the screen some way in order to let the user see the memory
test and loader messages etc.

> pci_init
> Ah look a video card, its an S3 with vesa, funky I can do
> this stuff nicely.

I'd prefer this to not be done in pci_init(), but in chrdev_init() where
it makes much more conceptual sense.

But yes, the above is exactly the kind of setup that is implied by having
a separate "console_init()" - console_init() is really meant to only
initialize enough of the console that we can hopefully do some silly
"printk()", even if the full functionality of the console cannot be taken
advantage of yet.

"console_init()" should _definitely_ not worry about getting the palette
right or anything like that. It should only worry about trying to do the
best it can to get the screen usable at all.

And conceptually it is ok to not even do that - you can certainly boot
blindly all the way to chrdev_init(). I would personally not want to work
with that kind of setup - but for people who don't care about the early
boot sequence the priorities are different. If you're developing a
filesystem or a driver, you don't need to see the memory management being
initialized - you'd just trust me and others to get that part of the boot
right.

So think of console_init() as just a hook for early setup. Nothing more,
nothing less.

Linus


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