Re: [Patch, RFC] Make struct fb_info ref-counted with kref

[James Simmons]

> > Bruno PrÃmont schrieb:
> > > On Tue, 21 Sep 2010 00:28:27 Florian Tobias Schandinat <FlorianSchandinat@xxxxxx> wrote:
> > >>> Tracking if/how often framebuffer is opened as such is a separate thing (though
> > >>> all users that have the framebuffer opened hold a reference to fb_info).
> > >> That's what I said. So as long as refcount <= 1 it does not matter whether you 
> > >> just count on open/release or additionally on every framebuffer operation, just 
> > >> that the later produces more noise.
> > > 
> > > Hm, I don't count on every framebuffer operation... in most cases
> > > fb_info is provided as function argument, in which case no further
> > > counting is needed as the caller has a valid reference.
> > > 
> > > With my patch applied refcount for registered but unsed framebuffer was
> > > 2 (once for the driver, once for registered_fb entry) and went up to 3
> > > when userspace opened framebuffer. fbcon's usage only incremented
> > > refcount for very short timeframes when effectively using fb_info.
> > > 
> > > When starting with the FB minor I have to take a new reference.
> > > (though I maybe should check if file's private data is set and use
> > > that reference instead of looking up fb_info by minor as is currently
> > > done)
> > > 
> > > For fbcon all the references are taken by FB minor (I wondered why
> > > fbcon only remembers index into registered_fb aka minor instead of
> > > fb_info itself)
> > 
> > True, I guess fb infrastructure and fbcon both could use a lot of work. At the 
> > moment I am more at fixing my driver but once that's done to an acceptable level 
> > I think I'll give it a try, too.
> 
> This year someone said he/she would look at making it possible to have
> multiple concurrently active consoles on distinct framebuffers.
> Hopefully something is happening on that front (that would certainly
> also include some fbcon cleanup)

That would be me. I have a tree at

http://git.infradead.org/users/jsimmons/linuxconsole-2.6.git

but currently fbcon is broken so I'm tracing down the problem.