Date: Tue, 23 Apr 96 9:00:15 MDT From: Greg Lehey <lehey.pad@sni.de> To: smpatel@umiacs.umd.edu (Sujal Patel) Cc: current@freebsd.org, hackers@freebsd.org (FreeBSD hackers) Subject: Re: request for a new "feature" as regards DDB Message-ID: <199604230703.JAA07887@nixpbe.pdb.sni.de> In-Reply-To: <Pine.NEB.3.92.960422180106.209p-100000@xi.dorm.umd.edu>; from "Sujal Patel" at Apr 22, 96 6:02 pm
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> > On Mon, 22 Apr 1996, Marc G. Fournier wrote: > >> I happened to be off of vt0 when it died, with no way to >> switch to vt0 and see what ddb was showing, and since I had to >> cold boot the machine as a result, couldn't even get a core dump :( >> >> So...any way of having an auto-switch to vt0 if the system >> crashes with DDB enabled? Good idea. I'll add it to my list. For those who don't know, I had planned to make some major changes to ddb Real Soon Now. > While we're talking about DDB, can't we have it timeout in 30s if you > don't hit a key (and then generate a core dump). Also a good idea. > What about making DDB a LKM also? Whenever I find myself using DDB, I > know that the system is going to panic, not everyone needs DDB loaded at > all times (and rebuilding kernels is such a pain). Yes, I had planned on that. Who can give me info on how to write LKMs? On the other subject, changing out of X into character mode: I believe that a debugger should have as little involvement with the subject being debugged (in this case, the kernel), as possible. I can't see why ddb shouldn't understand enough about generic VGA to be able to put it back in 25x80 mode. Somewhere I have a little program which I used to do this under BSD/386 0.3, where the X server wasn't always successful. It's only a few lines. I'm sure somebody's going to come up with "yes, but that's not completely generic", but I don't think this is an adequate argument. Make it a config option for ddb, and it'll handle 98% of all hardware. If somebody with the other 2% wants, they can do it for that hardware as well. I'm copying hackers on this, since that is where we discussed ddb before. Greg
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