Re: Patch to framebuffer

[Matt Keenan <tank.en.mate@gmail.com>]

Nathan Cline wrote:

>Hello, this is my first time posting to this list so please forgive me
>if I'm violating protocol in some way. :)  I've written a patch to the
>framebuffer code to modify its behavior a bit. I am running on a
>dual-headed system and I noticed when I was working in one console on
>one monitor, the console on the other monitor was "frozen", not
>updating itself. After some digging through the code I realized this
>is because the two framebuffer drivers share the same framebuffer code
>which stores a single pointer to the "current" virtual console. If a
>VC is not current it is considered invisible and is not updated. So I
>patched the code to store a pointer for each framebuffer to the
>"foreground" VC on each one. It seems to work well but I'd like to get
>others' input as this is my first time writing any kernel code, and to
>be honest there is so much code it's difficult to get a clear picture
>in my head of how the whole system works.
>I've attached the patches to this message, a small one to
>drivers/video/console/fbcon.h, and a larger one to fbcon.c. I would
>appreciate it if some of you guys could look over this code and look
>for any obvious errors, or better yet, hopefully someone else has a
>multihead system they can try it on. The patches are against the
>latest GIT source tree (torvalds, main branch, 2.6.15rc2) as of last
>night.
>Any replies to this message should be CC'ed directly to my e-mail
>account (nathan dot cline .. gmail dot com) as I am not currently
>subscribed to this list. I look forward to getting this patch of high
>enough quality to submit to Linus. Thanks!
>  
>
[PATCH SNIPPED]

Nathan you may also want to send a copy of your cleaned up patch to the 
folks at linuxconsole-dev@lists.sourceforge.net as that is list that 
deals with multihead development / issues. We also have patches for 
getting multiheaded X working as well.

Matt Keenan