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Date: Tue, 4 Jun 1996 14:21:22 -0500
From: Jim Lowe <james@miller.cs.uwm.edu>
Message-Id: <199606041921.OAA16941@miller.cs.uwm.edu>
To: terry@lambert.org
Subject: Re: Vm fixes NG
Cc: FreeBSD-current@FreeBSD.org, fcurrent@jraynard.demon.co.uk, grog@lemis.de
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> From: Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org>
> Subject: Re: Vm fixes NG
> Cc: fcurrent@jraynard.demon.co.uk, grog@lemis.de, FreeBSD-current@FreeBSD.org
> 
> > > > On a related note, is there any way to stop X grabbing the Ctl-Alt
> > > > sequence and drop into DDB?
> > > 
> > > We discussed this a while back while talking about ddb.  The problem
> > > is that it's almost impossible to find a way to set the display card
> > > back to text mode.
> >
> > Syscons seems to be able to do this just fine via <cntl><alt><fx>.  It
> > would sure be nice to be able to drop into the debugger when running X
> > w/o having to switch to another virtual console first.
> 
> The only fix would be for *all* graphic modes to be settable *only*
> through the console driver, so that the console driver can unset
> them without having to ask a user space program to do it for it.

I didn't realize that the X server was the one actually doing this.
I don't think it is necessary for *all* graphics modes to be settable
*only* through the console driver.  Dropping the X server into the
kernel seems like a big waste of space -- but I guess it is an option :-).

It should be possible to download two code segments to syscons when X
starts up for each particular card (or X-server).  This code sequence would
be ``put me into default mode'' and ``put me into graphics mode''.

Of course, the X server would have to update the ``put me into graphics mode''
when you used <ctl><alt><+,->, but that wouldn't be a big deal.  In any case,
it is certainly do able without teaching syscons everything that X
knows.  All syscons really needs to know is how to switch modes back and
forth.

	-Jim