Running frame buffer programs using a VGA console?
Silly question. Is it actually possible to run a fb program like fbtest if your console is the VGA console? I tried it but the fb driver doesn't seem to switch modes.
John
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Quoted 3 lines · John Zielinski
Silly question. Is it actually possible to run a fb program like fbtest if your console is the VGA console? I tried it but the fb driver doesn't seem to switch modes.
No, you cannot. You need an active frame buffer device driver.
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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Quoted 11 lines · Geert Uytterhoeven
Quoted 3 lines · John Zielinski
Silly question. Is it actually possible to run a fb program like fbtest if your console is the VGA console? I tried it but the fb driver doesn't seem to switch modes.
No, you cannot. You need an active frame buffer device driver.
I have the low level radeon fb driver in the kernel and it initializes like usual, but I turned off the frame buffer console option. I was wondering if the frame buffer programs can run like this. If not then I won't have to worry about that kind of configuration when working on fb programs.
John
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Quoted 10 lines · John Zielinski
Quoted 6 lines · Geert Uytterhoeven
Quoted 3 lines · John Zielinski
Silly question. Is it actually possible to run a fb program like fbtest if your console is the VGA console? I tried it but the fb driver doesn't seem to switch modes.
No, you cannot. You need an active frame buffer device driver.
I have the low level radeon fb driver in the kernel and it initializes
like usual, but I turned off the frame buffer console option. I was
So you have an active frame buffer device (you can check this using `cat /proc/fb')....
Quoted 3 lines
wondering if the frame buffer programs can run like this. If not then I won't have to worry about that kind of configuration when working on fb programs.
... and fbtest should work. You cannot switch between graphcis and text mode, though, since there's no console attached to your frame buffer device.
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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Quoted 6 lines · Geert Uytterhoeven
So you have an active frame buffer device (you can check this using `cat
/proc/fb')....
Yep. Same contents as when using fbcon.
Quoted 5 lines
... and fbtest should work. You cannot switch between graphcis and text mode, though, since there's no console attached to your frame buffer device.
Huh? Now I'm confused. Do you mean that I can't go between text and graphics using fbset or some other such utility or do you mean that fbtest can't go between text and graphics modes? Because it's the latter that's happening by the looks of things. It's not going into graphics mode to do the test.
John
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Quoted 9 lines · John Zielinski
Quoted 3 lines · Geert Uytterhoeven
... and fbtest should work. You cannot switch between graphcis and text mode, though, since there's no console attached to your frame buffer device.
Huh? Now I'm confused. Do you mean that I can't go between text and graphics using fbset or some other such utility or do you mean that fbtest can't go between text and graphics modes? Because it's the latter that's happening by the looks of things. It's not going into graphics mode to do the test.
I meant that you can't use the KDSETMODE ioctl if there's no console attached to the frame buffer device.
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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Quoted 4 lines · Geert Uytterhoeven
I meant that you can't use the KDSETMODE ioctl if there's no console attached to the frame buffer device.
Ok. My last patched fixed that. I tried it using a remote ssh connection and it worked perfectly.
What's happening here is that the radeon driver doesn't switch the card's video mode when I run the test. The fbtest program also shows a limited set of capabilities (no color modes) when I run it and aborts with a signal 11. It also kills the VGA font since I'm not saving video memory anymore. I noticed the other drivers do a VGA save/restore when they are opened or closed.
Time to look at the code some more...
John
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Quoted 7 lines · John Zielinski
Quoted 3 lines
Silly question. Is it actually possible to run a fb program like fbtest if your console is the VGA console? I tried it but the fb driver doesn't seem to switch modes.
No, you cannot. You need an active frame buffer device driver.
It depends on the setup and driver. With the riva and vga16fb driver you can. You just enable fbdev support without fbcon and use vgacon. It works :-)
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