CFT: Graphics support for /boot/loader

[Oliver Fromme]

Alex Dupre wrote:
 > Oliver Fromme ha scritto:
 > > Some of you might remember that I'm working on graphics
 > > support for our /boot/loader.
 > 
 > Just a side question: are you going to improve also the splash(4) 
 > support? Graphical loader is great, but unfortunately on amd64 the boot 
 > splash screen is unusable.

The problem is related to the fact that a 64bit kernel
cannot use VESA BIOS functions.  You should be able to
use standard VGA modes though, which don't require VESA
support.

Anyway, there have been several ideas floating around to
fix or work-around the VESA problem for amd64.  One of
them involves letting the loader prepare graphics mode
(doing all the VESA stuff) and hand all the necessary
information to the kernel, so the kernel only has to
perform framebuffer access, but no VESA BIOS calls.

It is my plan to try to look into that, but I would like
to continue with the current work on the boot loader
first.  As soon as the graphics support in the loader is
stable and "finished", I can start thinking about how to
interface that graphics support with the kernel's syscons
driver (which is a very sensitive piece of code).

Best regards
   Oliver

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