Re: Multi-seat X crashes

[Helge H. <hel...@ai...>]

Erik Walthinsen wrote:

>Helge Hafting wrote:
>  
>
>>There are further difficulties
>>if you're trying for a fb per head on a multihead card, but one
>>fb per card is supposed to work.
>>    
>>
>AFAIK only the Matrox fb driver currently actually does multiple fb
>devices.  Though Radeon cards have had multiple CRTCs for years now...
>
>  
>
>>The device-nodes /dev/fb1, /dev/fb2, and so on exists?
>>    
>>
>Via udev, yes, as needed.
>
>  
>
>>What happens if you compile the framebuffer driver into the kernel,
>>instead of using a module?  Or if you tries to load that module
>>a second time?
>>    
>>
>I'll try compiling it in, but I don't think I can load the module
>multiple times.
>
>  
>
>>It likely won't, though.  There is a way around this, but it is long.
>>    
>>
>This is basically what I'm doing to initialize the cards currently, with
>a script that starts up and kills each X server in sequence, with
>SingleCard "false".  Otherwise the SingleCard "true" server for any but
>the "primary" card will lock the machine at startup.
>
>  
>
I think you may cut down on the time for this by starting (and killing)
one xserver that uses all the screens at once.  It will then initialize 
all those
adapters.  This should be a safe approach, as xserver support for using
many cards (for a single user) is very old.  You'll need an extra xorg.conf
file of course.

Anyway, loading the framebuffer driver _after_ this initialization
completes, is supposed to work.  Make sure the driver isn't
present before though, or it will give up too early on those
uninitialized cards.

>Is there any code out there to execute the int10 VGA BIOS without having
>to start up a whole X server?
>  
>
Not that I know of.  One approach could be to extract this code from
the X codebase, and throw away the rest of X.

Helge Hafting