svn commit: r264907 - in head/release: amd64 i386

[John Baldwin]

On Wednesday, April 30, 2014 10:48:27 am Nathan Whitehorn wrote:
> On 04/30/14 06:36, Ed Maste wrote:
> > On 30 April 2014 01:41, Nathan Whitehorn <nwhitehorn at freebsd.org> wrote:
> >> So, to make universally bootable install media, we have to switch the
> >> default console driver to newcons. This means we need to finish polishing
> >> newcons and need to think about what, exactly, the missing pieces are to
> >> enable it as the default.
> > There's a Newcons wiki page at https://wiki.freebsd.org/Newcons with
> > some details, but I believe the main points are:
> >
> > 1. Documentation.  We currently have no vt(4) man page so one needs to
> > be written, and other pages likely need to be updated.  Other
> > documentation (like the handbook) need to be investigated.
> > 2. Control tools (e.g. kbdmap(1), vidcontrol(1), vidfont(1)) need to
> > be updated.  Alexandr posted a patch for vidcontrol with the subject
> > "RFT vidcontrol for vt(4)"
> > 3. Provide console fonts for vt, equivalent to /usr/share/syscons/fonts.
> > 4. Address some performance issues, especially on certain non-x86 and
> > low-end hardware, and in virtual machines.
> > 5. Address boot console priority.
> >
> 
> Which of these are blockers before turning it on in GENERIC for wider 
> testing? Point #1 is a must, I think. #2 seems potentially destructive: 
> do we want to have to make them work with both syscons and vt? #5 we've 
> worked around for the time being. #4 would be nice, but maybe wider 
> testing helps with it. It's painfully slow on regular x86 hardware as 
> well -- my brand-new Lenovo laptop for instance. But I think we could 
> switch GENERIC on -CURRENT over only after writing some documentation.
> -Nathan

I would prefer having a boot time knob to switch between vt or sc and
being able to include both in the kernel.  The boot time knob could default
to vt when booting from EFI.

-- 
John Baldwin