Here is my first pass at modularizing the framebuffer console
fonts. The benefits of this change are primarily for users who
compile more than just the default console font in their kernel:
o Saves unswappable kernel memory.
o Enables smaller boot floppies (more drivers) and boot partitions.
o At least after I get font unloading working, it will make
it feasible to upgrade console font modules without
rebooting.
With this change, you do not have to have all of the console
fonts that you would ever want to use without rebooting locked into
kernel memory. Instead, you can just load the fonts that to use
and still have the possibility to load other fonts later if you want.
One big deficiency with this code is that it will
not allow you to unload a font once it has been used, because I
have not added any calls to my new release_font() routine. However,
this is still no worse than the status quo.
fbcon_find_font will now attempt to use modprobe to load
a font that it fails to find; however, since the font names do not
currently match the module names, you will need to edit your
/etc/modules.conf file to make this work. Also, this functionality
does not currently extend to fbcon_get_default_font, since it does
not take a font name, although I could add a request_module("default_font")
for users to define in /etc/modules.conf if they want, if nothing
smarter can be done.
All that I know about behavior of this patch right now is that
it does not break my VGA console (which does not use these fonts, to
the best of my knowledge). Since this new code causes fonts to
initialized by module_init() declarations, and those routines are
called rather late in kernel initialization, I suspect that there
may be order of initialization problem with that, and would
appreciate confirmation.
-- Adam J. Richter __ ______________ 4880 Stevens Creek Blvd, Suite 104 adam@yggdrasil.com \ / San Jose, California 95129-1034 +1 408 261-6630 | g g d r a s i l United States of America fax +1 408 261-6631 "Free Software For The Rest Of Us."
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Aug 23 2001 - 21:00:30 EST