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Message-Id: <1245743280.5580.2203.camel@thor.local>
Date: Tue, 23 Jun 2009 09:48:00 +0200
From: Michel Dänzer <michel@...nzer.net>
To: Jesse Barnes <jbarnes@...tuousgeek.org>
Cc: Benjamin Herrenschmidt <benh@...nel.crashing.org>,
Thomas@...line-mail2.netline.ch, Dave Airlie <airlied@...ux.ie>,
Andrew Lutomirski <luto@....edu>,
Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
Jerome Glisse <jglisse@...hat.com>, dri-devel@...ts.sf.net,
Alex Deucher <alexdeucher@...il.com>,
Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>
Subject: Re: [git pull] drm: previous pull req + 1.
On Mon, 2009-06-22 at 18:18 -0700, Jesse Barnes wrote:
> On Tue, 23 Jun 2009 11:04:39 +1000
> Benjamin Herrenschmidt <benh@...nel.crashing.org> wrote:
>
> > On Mon, 2009-06-22 at 17:24 -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> > >
> > > On Tue, 23 Jun 2009, Benjamin Herrenschmidt wrote:
> > > >
> > > > As far as I can remember, all fbdev operations are done under the
> > > > console semaphore.
> > >
> > > Yeah, and some of them are horribly broken (ie copying data from
> > > user space while doing it - causing horrible things like VC
> > > switching latencies and invisible printk's if an oops happens
> > > during the op).
> > >
> > > Or maybe that got fixed.
> >
> > Well, it does rely on userspace behaving.. ie, no accel ops are done
> > by the kernel in KD_GRAPHICS and userspace is -supposed- to switch to
> > KD_GRAPHICS before touching the fb.
> >
> > In fact, nowdays, we do have the infrastructure to be smart and
> > enforce that. IE. Instead of using a boring remap_page_ranges() in
> > fb_mmap() we could use a fault handler. When in KD_TEXT, we fail
> > them, when in KD_GRAPHICS, we service them, and we
> > unmap_mapping_range() when switching. Something like that...
> >
> > Dunno how that interacts with the new DRM thingy though.
>
> I think it could work, but ideally we'd keep the kernel fbcon object
> pinned, and keep printing into it even while some other gfx app is
> running.
It doesn't need to be pinned for that, does it? I think in the long run
it's a bad idea to have it pinned all the time, think of machines with
only 8 MB of VRAM...
> (something like this would also be handy for dual head debugging; one
> head running your desktop and the other a debug console printing all
> the messages).
On a side note, I did precisely that about ten years ago on my Amiga. :)
Granted, that was using two separate framebuffer devices (X glint driver
on top of pm2fb, debug messages on amifb), but I think even that case
isn't possible ATM. I agree it would be nice, though realistically
there's hardly a way around a second machine for graphics driver
development anyway.
--
Earthling Michel Dänzer | http://www.vmware.com
Libre software enthusiast | Debian, X and DRI developer
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