From owner-freebsd-bugs Thu Oct 28 13:30:16 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-bugs@freebsd.org Received: from freefall.freebsd.org (freefall.FreeBSD.ORG [204.216.27.21]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E4F7214BF4 for ; Thu, 28 Oct 1999 13:30:08 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from gnats@FreeBSD.org) Received: (from gnats@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.9.3/8.9.2) id NAA31057; Thu, 28 Oct 1999 13:30:02 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from gnats@FreeBSD.org) Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 13:30:02 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <199910282030.NAA31057@freefall.freebsd.org> To: freebsd-bugs@FreeBSD.org Cc: From: "Ronald F. Guilmette" Subject: Re: kern/14566: Non-kernel programs have little/no control over VGA/VESA devices Reply-To: "Ronald F. Guilmette" Sender: owner-freebsd-bugs@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org The following reply was made to PR kern/14566; it has been noted by GNATS. From: "Ronald F. Guilmette" To: Alexey Zelkin 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