Re: Fixes for vgafb on 2.1.107

Alan Cox (alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk)
Mon, 29 Jun 1998 00:41:17 +0100 (BST)

> "console_init()" is placed early exactly because there are people who
> want to see kernel panics on the screen even when they happen early in
> the bootup sequence (ie me).
>
> In short, the vger order is bad, and will never be accepted. It makes
> no sense to have console_init() be placed later, because if it was
> placed later it shouldn't be there at all, as chrdev_init() comes into
> play.

There are actually some cases the existing kernel order doesnt exactly
work even though I think your argument is basically valid. On some Mac
machines we have to find the video cards before we turn the irqs on.
We can hide that in arch specific setup.

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

because the console not only has the frame buffer representation but a
private copy of the data in text form (for screen switch etc) you can
do this very nicely. You dont even get a blank screen, it jumps mode
and re-renders

Alan

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