Re: [PATCH] neofb patches

[Benjamin Herrenschmidt <benh@kernel.crashing.org>]

> For example lets say I have odd numbered consoles mapped on my AGP 
> Radeon card and even numbered consoles mapped to my PCI Riva card.  I 
> switch to console 1 and fire up a fb dvd player app.  It opens /dev/fb 
> (29,255) and switches to KD_GRAPHICS.   LOTR starts playing on my big 
> 21" monitor hooked up to the Radeon.  As a user I didn't have to know 
> that /dev/fb0 was really my 21" monitor and didn't have to give any 
> command line switches to do this.  The cursor was blinking on my 21" and 
> all I had to do is type dvdplay and away I went.  I would also be 
> prevented from switching to odd numbered consoles now.

Why ? Your player doesn't support proper console switching ?

> No problem.  ALT-F2 and now my 19" monitor has a blinking cursor.  I 
> type in picview and again the jpeg viewing program opens /dev/fb and 
> switches to KD_GRAPHICS and now I'm looking a vacation photos on my old 
> riva card.  Again, I didn't have to know that /dev/fb1 is my 19" monitor 
> and no command line arguments.  The app fires up on the monitor that had 
> the focus (forground console doesn't sound right on multi monitor setups 
> IMHO).
> 
> Now I can only switch between console 1 and 2.  Consoles 3 and up can't 
> be switched to as both fb devices are in use.
> 
> BTW, this is just an example.  I don't know if a fb dvd player is out 
> there but I do belive there's a picture viewing fb app.

You don't need a /dev/fb for that do you ? You need to map the current
vt to it's fb via the existing fbdev ioctls, isn't that possible ? (just
asking , I've never actually done that).

> Normally yes.  But let's say a switch was added to X or X's fb driver to 
> tell it to not open a new VT and just start on the current console.  If 
> I fire it up on console 1 X starts on my 21" monitor but if I start it 
> on console 2 it fires up on my 19" monitor.  The other monitor would 
> still have a console.
> 
> This was just a fun thought to see if it would actually work.  But the 
> dvd/picture example above is very practical.

Yup, but I don't think we need to change much of the actual code to
acheive this result. We still have the KD_GRAPHICS/KD_TEXT thing for
arbitrating who owns the accel engine and it would just work.

Ben.




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