I've started playing with the modesetting branch of DRM and managed to get it to work on my GMA 965 based laptop (after working out I needed to pass modeset=1 as a parameter to the i915 module).
On my laptop, I get /dev/fb0 & /dev/fb1, with /dev/fb0 connected to my laptop screen (LVDS?) and fb1 connected to VGA out. I can successfully run Qt/Embedded on fb1 (using the normal fbdev interface... not started writing drm modesetting code yet). What would be nice is to have a tool like fbset which not only sets the mode, but also chooses which crtc (correct terminology?) is connected to which framebuffer. On the OMAP framebuffer, this can be controlled through a sysfs interface. However, my understanding is that the i915 driver provides a linuxfb emulation driver it registers with the kernel during probe? The fbcon then binds to the (first) fbdev device? So the tool would in fact just configure i915's linuxfb emulation and not be very useful or portable. Have I understood things correctly? I'm getting a bit confused about how things should look inside the kernel (This is mainly because I'm having a hard time working out how consoles, virtual terminals & vt-switching fit together... but I'm picking it up bit-by-bit). It seems to me that a completely new console driver needs to be written which uses the drm modesetting interface, rather than the fbdev interface? So the tool to set modes & change crtcs would only talk to the console driver. User-space applications like X & Qt/Embedded seem pretty strait-forward. They just use mode setting functions in libdrm. I.e. They provide their own way of configuring which output goes to which crtc. What about vt-switches? Will an application still be responsible for re-drawing itself after a vt-switch? Or will vt-switches now become completely transparent to userspace applications? Please let me know what I've got wrong. Eventually, I'd quite like to have a go at writing some in-kernel stuff using the drm. If there's any boring low-hanging fruit I could start to learn on, let me know (like an fbset-like utility). Cheers, Tom ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by the 2008 JavaOne(SM) Conference Don't miss this year's exciting event. There's still time to save $100. Use priority code J8TL2D2. http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;198757673;13503038;p?http://java.sun.com/javaone -- _______________________________________________ Dri-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/dri-devel
