Re: Framebuffer devices as modules?

On Sat, Aug 27, 2005 at 08:20:11AM +0800, Antonino A. Daplas wrote:
> Sven Luther wrote:
> >On Fri, Aug 26, 2005 at 10:06:53PM +0800, Antonino A. Daplas wrote:
> >>Sven Luther wrote:
> >>>On Wed, Aug 24, 2005 at 06:05:34AM +0800, Antonino A. Daplas wrote:
> >>>>Florian Echtler wrote:
> >>>>>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> >>>>>Hash: SHA1
> >>>>>
> >>>>>Hi, I was trying to have fbcon and nvidiafb as modules, however,
> >>>>>the console stays plain VGA when I load both. fbset complains 
> >>>>>about "no such device: /dev/fb0".. (the device itself exists, and
> >>>>>works when everything is compiled into the kernel).
> >>>>What kernel version are you using?
> >>>BTW, would it be possible to use the new initramfs infrastructure, to 
> >>>move the
> >>>fbdev drivers out of the kernel and into their own initramfs thingy, and 
> >>>still
> >>>be able to start them as early as possible ?
> >>I don't see why not. You can compile fbcon statically, and the drivers as 
> >>modules.
> >>Or both fbcon and drivers as modules.
> >
> >Yeah, well, the constraint is that this is on powerpc, and there is no 
> >vgacon
> >or whatever, and we still like to have debug output as soon as possible.
> >
> 
> The framebuffer can load as early as you can load initrd. So you'll 
> basically
> miss bugs before the filesystem gets loaded. The screen is buffered, so the
> contents are there. So if you are fortunate enough to load the framebuffer 
> system
> even if the bug happened a bit earlier, you might still be able to see the
> message.
> 
> Note that the framebuffer system loads a little bit late compared to 2.4. 
> It gets
> loaded after PCI, PARISC and rapidio.

I guess we have always the serial console if earlier debugging is needed.

Friendly,

Sven Luther



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