Re: [Xen-devel] beginnings of allowing more than the basic 80x25 VGAscreen resolution

[Gerd Knorr <kraxel@xxxxxxx>]

  Hi,

> First of all, at least grub 0.9x (which is what I think is currently in
> wide-spread use) doesn't seem to have even infrastructure to report
> video information, not to think about changing the video mode. But I
> agree that that'd be the best place for this to live.

Distributions have a graphical boot menu, so grub must do some
mode switching already.  Havn't looked at the grub code, but I
think adding that wouldn't be too hard.  Might be vanilla grub
doesn't do that so you'll have to dig into distribution patches.

> Second, simply passing on the multi-boot info to the guest kernel would
> still require that the interface between XEN and the guest kernel be
> changed.

I agree here.

> >Text mode is really simple, that is just another screen size
> >than 80x25, but completely identical otherwise.  Font stuff is
> >handled by bios and vga hardware, nothing to worry about here.
> 
> That builds on the assumption that the boot loader actually has the
> necessary infrastructure. With the assumption that it's quite far away
> from that, I would still think that XEN should try provide the ability
> to change modes (at least until the boot loader actually does).

I would try to hack grub (or syslinux, Tim's multiboot loader is
merged upstream ;) instead of adding a temporary solution to
xen.  YMMV.

> Once XEN is so stable that you can afford not seeing its initial
> messages, leaving the screen alone when in graphics mode is certainly an
> option. But I don't think that's an option right now.

For hacking on xen having a serial console is a great thing.
My xen devel machine doesn't even have a monitor connected ;)

  Gerd

-- 
panic("it works"); /* avoid being flooded with debug messages */

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