On Thu, 9 Jan 2003, James Simmons wrote:

quoted

How is a driver supposed to set the default mode on init lately ?

Looking at rivafb, it fills info->var from fb_find_mode with the mode
option if any, but then does nothing with it (and does nothing if
no mode option is passed).

On radeonfb, I fill a var  with the default mode obtained
from EDID or the option if any. Then, I basically do

	info->var = var;
	var.activate = FB_ACTIVATE_NOW;
	fb_set_var(&var, info);

before calling register_framebuffer.

What is the right way to do ?

Sorry about the confusion. The answer depends on the driver. For the 
rivafb driver because it has a VGA core we have it NOT switch to a 
graphics state. The reason is 


1) If we run a /dev/fb app was can save the hardware text mode state and
    restore it on closing /dev/fb. You can see this in rivafb_open and
   rivafb_release. 

2) We can test loading it as a module as see debugging info while still
   having a VGA text mode. Makes life a little easier. The other thing 
   I like to do is run mdacon and just the fbdev driver by itself. I can 
   then test the fbdev driver. When I get really brave I test fbcon.c and
   can debug it.

Now for graphics hardware built in that has no hardware text mode. It is 
better to set the video mode right away.

Note: on some platforms graphics chips with VGA cores are _not_ initialized to
VGA mode by the firmware. So great care should be taken when not explicitly
switching to graphics mode on those platforms.

Gr{oetje,eeting}s,

						Geert

--
Geert Uytterhoeven -- There's lots of Linux beyond ia32 -- geert@linux-m68k.org

In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But
when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that.
							    -- Linus Torvalds



-------------------------------------------------------
This SF.NET email is sponsored by:
SourceForge Enterprise Edition + IBM + LinuxWorld = Something 2 See!
http://www.vasoftware.com