Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 13:30:02 -0700 (PDT) From: "Ronald F. Guilmette" <rfg@monkeys.com> To: freebsd-bugs@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: kern/14566: Non-kernel programs have little/no control over VGA/VESA devices Message-ID: <199910282030.NAA31057@freefall.freebsd.org>
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The following reply was made to PR kern/14566; it has been noted by GNATS. From: "Ronald F. Guilmette" <rfg@monkeys.com> To: Alexey Zelkin <phantom@FreeBSD.org> Cc: FreeBSD-gnats-submit@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: kern/14566: Non-kernel programs have little/no control over VGA/VESA devices Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 13:21:27 -0700 In message <19991028145155.B357@scorpion.crimea.ua>, you wrote: >hi, > >On Wed, Oct 27, 1999 at 05:42:20PM -0700, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote: >> >> >Number: 14566 >> >Category: kern >> >Synopsis: Non-kernel programs have little/no control over VGA/VESA de >vices > >Please refer to vgl(3) manpage. It describes VGA library. > >PS: I'll add refernce to this library to vga(4) soon. Thanks for report! Thank you for your response. Yes, the vgl(3) library contains functions which implement the kinds of things that I was talking about, and yes, there should be a reference to vgl(3) _somewhere_ on the vga(4) man page. However, I think that my bug report is still very valid. The vgl(3) library is an ordinary, user-level library, properly documented in Section 3 of the manual. But the functionality it provides *must* be implemented in terms of some lower-level (kernel) capabilities. Those lower level (direct hardware control) capabilities are obviously available in user land (or else the vgl(3) library could not have been built) but I still don't know how _I_, as a programmer, can get at those lower level capabilities directly. But I would like to know. And I think that it makes sense for the kernel to export these lower level capabilities as ioctl() calls which are then implemented by the vga driver (not by the higher-level syscons driver). Well, that's my opinion anyway. As I mentioned, the code for implementing all of these fun things _does_ seem to be present in the kernel's vga driver. Now its just a matter of attaching each one of those internal vga driver functions to some special (new?) ioctl() code. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-bugs" in the body of the message
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