Re: [Linux-fbdev-devel] FB console clears with large white area at startup

[Antonino D. <ad...@po...>]

On Wed, 2002-05-01 at 01:46, Sven wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 30, 2002 at 10:26:08AM -0700, James Simmons wrote:
> > 
> > > > Except what actually happens is that most of the screen is cleared to white,
> > > > and console messages appear on the bottom line of the white area. As the
> > > > console scrolls the white area scrolls up the screen, though that part of it to
> > > > the right of Tux remains as long as Tux remains.
> > > 
> > > I have the same problem with pm3fb.
> > 
> > the reason was discovered to be from calling set_var before
> > register_framebuffer. 
> 
> Not sure about this one, because applying the patch from roman to 2.4.18 +
> pm3fb did hang the kernel early one (before registering the fbdev i think, it
> never switched away from the console text mode). That said, i don't get a
> white space stuff, but a green/black vertical stripes with some char embedded
> in the green ones.
> 

>From what I have observed, the critical point is setting up the driver
just enough so everything is initialized, but reserve switching the
hardware to graphics mode only during or after register_framebuffer. 
Some drivers do this by checking a flag which tells if the driver is in
initialization stage or not. In the case of aty128fb.c, it checks if
'con' is valid or not. It has this in set_var:

    if (!info->fb_info.display_fg || info->fb_info.display_fg->vc_num
==  con)
	aty128_set_par(&par, info);

Probably, a similar check in pm3fb_set_par might work?

Tony