On 24-Jul-01 Kazutaka YOKOTA wrote:
> This is to propose to abolish KLD screen saver modules.
>
> KLD screen savers have the following problems/deficiencies.
>
> - It is too easy to abuse the power of being run in the kernel
> mode. The screen saver is invoked periodically once the console
> becomes idle. It should not spend long time to draw something
> to the screen. But, we may be tempted to do a bit more elaborate
> drawing so that we get "interesting" effects. It's too easy to
> degrade the system performance by staying in the screen saver
> too long.
You can stick the screen saver in a low priority kthread and achieve the same
effect.
> - While it is easy to manipulate the video board in the KLD module
> (because we can go anywhere and access anything :-), there are
> limitations. If you want to perform file I/O (to obtain some
> bitmaps from files), or want to read some sort of configuration
> file, there is no straight forward way to do so.
You can use kldload or the loader with the -t 'foo' stuff to load configuration
files, etc. that modules can get at.
Just pointing out that userland is not the only way of achieving your goals.
--
John Baldwin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -- http://www.FreeBSD.org/~jhb/
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