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From: Robert Watson <rwatson@FreeBSD.org>
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To: Ed Schouten <ed@80386.nl>
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Cc: freebsd-xen@freebsd.org, Adrian Chadd <adrian@freebsd.org>,
	FreeBSD Current <freebsd-current@freebsd.org>
Subject: Re: Default Xen PVM console?
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On Sun, 24 May 2009, Ed Schouten wrote:

> * Adrian Chadd <adrian@freebsd.org> wrote:
>> * Modify the xenconsole driver to attach to ttyv0 (via a kernel environment 
>> variable) so /etc/ttys doesn't need modifying (but this may confuse tools 
>> that assumes /dev/ttyvX == syscons.)
>
> Please don't. Someone on IRC told me Xen also has some framebuffer feature. 
> Say, someone would port syscons to Xen, the naming would conflict with the 
> console device node. /dev/xc0 is good enough. I even think it should have 
> been called ttyx0, not xc0.

Given that there will be increasing levels of support for "pass-through" 
hardware access in virtual machine environments and a trend in the direction 
of virtualization-friendly hardware, we shouldn't preclude the possibility of 
something a lot closer to syscons working inside of Xen in the future.  This 
means we should leave the syscons device names open so that syscons can claim 
them if desired.

Robert N M Watson
Computer Laboratory
University of Cambridge