Re: Framebuffer devices as modules?

On Sat, 27 Aug 2005, Sven Luther wrote:
> 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.

Don't we have promcon, on some PPCs?

Gr{oetje,eeting}s,

						Geert

--
Geert Uytterhoeven -- There's lots of Linux beyond ia32 -- [email protected]

In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But
when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that.
							    -- Linus Torvalds


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