Messages in this thread | | | From | "Kendall Bennett" <> | Date | Fri, 15 Oct 2004 11:20:21 -0700 | Subject | Re: Generic VESA framebuffer driver and Video card BOOT? |
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Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> wrote:
> On Iau, 2004-10-14 at 21:46, Kendall Bennett wrote: > > a way to spawn a user mode process that early in the boot sequence (it > > would have to come from the initrd image I expect) then the only option > > is to compile it into the kernel. > > There is exactly that in 2.6 - the hotplug interfaces allow the > kernel to fire off userspace programs. Jon Smirl (who you should > definitely talk to about this stuff) has been hammering out a > design for moving almost all the mode switching into user space for > kernel video.
That is awesome! I am all for moving this outside of the kernel, as it would allow the use of ream vm86() services for VGA/VESA BIOS access on x86 and the user of the emulator for non-x86 platforms.
The only catch would be making sure this stuff is available really early in the boot sequence. As it stands right now the solution we have brings up the video almost imediately after you see the 'uncompressing kernel image' message on the serial port. The other solution of course is to get this into the boot loader which is what the AmigaOne folks did for their machines (U-Boot brings up the video). We are working with those guys to update their BIOS emulator to the latest version as the one they have doesn't work that reliably.
Anyway how do I find out more about this in 2.6?
Also I assume the code would need to end up in the initrg image, correct? Can you point me at some resources to learn more about how to get custom code into the initrd image?
Regards,
--- Kendall Bennett Chief Executive Officer SciTech Software, Inc. Phone: (530) 894 8400 http://www.scitechsoft.com
~ SciTech SNAP - The future of device driver technology! ~
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