Re: linux-kernel-digest V1 #985

Jakub Jelinek (jj@sunsite.ms.mff.cuni.cz)
Fri, 11 Jul 1997 21:15:26 +0200 (MET DST)

> I think this is overcomplicating a simple issue. We can do the penguin
> for the cost of basically no memory as follows
>
> In the console init code set up the font characters, and change the
> clear screen sequence at the start of console init to be
>
> clear screen
> draw penguins/logo/version string etc
> set scrolling region to start at line below penguin. The text will leave
> that region nicely untouched until a change scroll region or reset terminal
> string occurs.
>
> The penguin and font load are discardable in 2.1 with an __initfunc. We
> can also then change this to be useful as well as amusing by having a
> boot display looking like
>

Am going to code this for UltraLinux and SparcLinux soon (I thought about
this, but didn't know when is the right time to reset scrolling region).
Just one thing for i386 - I think at the time the scrolling region is reset,
kernel should put back the normal chars in that place - it will not be
needed ever more and requiring user to change the font is strange - if there
is the penguin, userland shouldn't know about that and shouldn't worry...
The space for the chars to be put back can be freed, of course, at that time
as well.

Cheers,
Jakub
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Jakub Jelinek | jj@sunsite.mff.cuni.cz | http://sunsite.mff.cuni.cz
Administrator of SunSITE Czech Republic, MFF, Charles University
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Ultralinux - first 64bit OS to take full power from the UltraSparc
Linux version 2.1.44 on a sparc64 machine (333.41 BogoMips).
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