On Wed Nov 15 2000 at 08:44, "Touloumtzis, Michael" wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 14, 2000 at 06:50:50PM +0100, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> > It happens from to time X crashes or locks, then I telnet from another
> > box and after killing X I find I am unable to restore the console to
> > normal non graphic mode. How can this be done?
>
> I've not had to do this myself (caveat), but if believe that you want
> to use savetextmode and restoretextmode. The problem is that the SVGA
> registers are corrupted by the X crash. The only solutions, IIRC, is
> to have done a savetextmode to a file before starting X, then telnet
> from another machine (or type blind) and use restoretextmode to set the
> registers back from the saved file contents. Also, if you can do without
> console mode until the next reboot, you should be able to restart X and
> limp along.
>
> - MikeT
If only those svga-based programs were solid and reliable and works
with ALL video cards. svgalib is good (excellent!) for what it
does, but it is not always the real answer to this problem.
I have some exposure to banshee, voodoo2, voodoo3 and rivaTNT cards,
and even though they are all vesa-2 compliant, svga doesn't do a
very reliable job with any of them. I've even had trident blade3d
cards go foul with svga (and X too). If the video mode isn't a
complete mess, the font is wrong and I have to "go fiddling in the
dark" trying to use consolechars to load a useful font. Even using
savetextmode itself will often (usually) result in a corrupted
console video display that nothing but a reboot will fix.
SVGATextMode isn't much help on newer cards either - it isn't up to
date with its chipset database and does't know how to handle those
it doesn't recognise (not even vesa). At least svgalib is being
maintained with support for newer cards.
The problem is worse when the console resolution is set at bootup to
something other than 80x25 (and I like using 132x60 or 132x43). And
"warning will robinson" crash-time if framebuffer resolutions are
used. (fbset is almost useless for resetting video modes and fonts
as far as I can tell).
I have never played around with ggi, but from what I understand this
could be one solution that might be useful.
But overall, this is a real problem. It is possible to telnet/ssh
into a box with a corrupted console and use "chvt" and "textmode" as
root (to act on the physical console). So often all I simply want
to do is reset the console screen resolution (and font) to what it
was when it was booted, but there isn't a utility around that can do
that reliabily. (Even though the kernel itself can do this at
bootup!) Or perhaps I have missed something?
The impression that I recently got from the linux-console mailing
list is that there is bunch of people keen to rewrite all the
console code so that things like different resolutions can be set on
a per-console basis, etc. And I'm hoping that the sorts of problems
I am experiencing on occasions using current software with these
cards will finally go away when this happens.
Cheers
Tony
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