On Thu, Dec 05, 2002 at 05:35:56PM +0000, James Simmons wrote:

quoted

If X is running  in native mode then it has to save the register state. 
Otherwise you cannot switch to a console.  If X is running on top of
fbdev, then state restore/saves are done using fb_set_var and
fb_get_var.  The registers are not touched, that's the purpose of fbdev.

If you are running vgacon, fbdev, and native X, then yes, fbdev and X
has to do a save of their initial state.

Not really. When X closes /dev/fb then fb_release is called which if the 

That supposes X is fbdev aware (either using the fbdev driver or the
UseFBDev option), right ? What if X knows nothing about fbdev, it will
try restoring stuff as if it was in text mode.

driver supports it will switch back to text mode. The exception is 
firmware based fbdev drivers like vesafb and offb.  

quoted

quoted

Does this also apply to vesafb ?

Not too sure about this. vesa requires real-mode initialization.  Either
you do this at boot time, or fake a real-mode environment like what X
does.

X has to reset the vidoe hardware back to the state that matches what the 
VESA mode was. Other wise it will mess you your system.

P.S

    X on VESA fb always foobars my system when I exit X.

With which driver ? (i am happily running the vesa X driver on top of
vesafb without problems).

Friendly,

Sven Luther