[Testers wanted] /dev/console cleanups

[Ed Schouten]

Hello everyone,

Most of you probably already know that I've been very busy improving our
kernel's TTY implementation. I've committed the new MPSAFE TTY layer
back in August. So far most of the things seem to work properly as far
as I can see. There are always some small bugs, but I'm confident we'll
get them fixed before 8.0.

One of the things that I dislike about the code we have right now, is
the way /dev/console is implemented. There is a small amount of
complexity there, which is mainly because of the fact that our console
code actually works on two different levels:

- We've got kernel messages that are printed using very low-level
  routines and communicate directly with the drivers.

- We've got user messages that are printed through /dev/console, which
  actually work on the TTY level, but make use of a similar device
  selection as the first set of routines.

In an attempt to make /dev/console MPSAFE, I moved /dev/console into the
TTY layer itself, which makes it a lot more simple than it is now.

Well, to keep a long story short, it would be wonderful if some people
could test the latest MPSAFE TTY patchset, just to make sure it doesn't
wreck people's setups after I commit this. So just apply the patch and
see if you can still boot your system, go into single user and multi
user mode, use conscontrol(8), etc.

I've stored the latest MPSAFE TTY patchsets at the usual location. Make
sure you download the latest version.

	http://people.FreeBSD.org/~ed/mpsafetty/

The patchset also includes some other nice things, like some manual
pages (not finished) and a port of snp(4) to the new TTY layer (also not
finished).

Thank you for your attention!

-- 
 Ed Schouten <ed at 80386.nl>
 WWW: http://80386.nl/
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