Subject: virtual consoles working. Date: Mon, 23 Dec 91 17:00:15 PST From: pmacdona@sol.UVic.CA (Peter MacDonald) To: linux-activists@joker.cs.hut.fi Hi and merry Xmas. This note is coming to you from the virtual console of Linux. Yep. I have virtual consoles working under linux. Although this is based upon Gordon Irlams minix patches, virtually no code from there was actually used. This is more a product of minix's message passing kernel being so different from Linux's unified approach than by design. But I am trying to adapt as much of his setterm program as possible, so that a user interface for setting colors and the like is available. To get around the problem of no init/login I am using the "doshell" program posted here earlier. Actually, for standalone machines I think I prefer it over getty/login. I will post the patches to 0.11 as soon as I have tested a little more, and had a chance to bundle it up. I also have done all of the design and coding, but none of the testing on a select call, adapted from Mathius Lauttiners design. But as Proven has requested, I will probably wait until after 0.12 is out before going any further with that. Getting a peek at your VFS patches early, thought might help. It's funny how things work out. I was working on select, started eyeing how they might interact with pty's, and realized that virtual consoles would probably still be desirable after ptys, as well as being easier to do. Anyways, have a good christmas all. I am heading to the ski slopes so I know I'll have fun. Hope you do to.
Subject: virtual consoles: part 2 Date: Tue, 24 Dec 91 00:50:21 PST From: pmacdona@sol.UVic.CA (Peter MacDonald) To: linux-activists@joker.cs.hut.fi concatenate these to the previous message. Compressed
Subject: virtual consoles Date: Tue, 24 Dec 91 00:49:18 PST From: pmacdona@sol.UVic.CA (Peter MacDonald) To: linux-activists@joker.cs.hut.fi Here is PART 1 of the patchs to allow Virtual consoles under linux. I am posting these patches because xmas is here, and I will not be..., so use at your own risk. They are mailed in two parts, because who knows what vicious mailers await out there. Concatenate the two file, uudecode them, then unshare them. The readme file will guide you from there. Compressed
Subject: console fix, plus vt100 graphic char support Date: Tue, 24 Dec 91 18:21:19 PST From: pmacdona@sol.UVic.CA (Peter MacDonald) To: linux-activists@joker.cs.hut.fi The following patch fixes a bug in console that prevented saving and restoring cursor position from working. It also adds support for the vt100 graphics characters like boxes, tees, lines etc. (Thus my all-in-one screen is correct.) Now if I could just get the keyboard to act like a vt220... Apply the patch to kernel/chr_drv/console.c, in addition to my previous virtual consoles patch. BTW if anyone wants to take a crack at making the character attributes work correctly in all cases, be my guest. pmacdona@sol.uvic.ca Compressed
Subject: ps, and some vc junk. Date: Fri, 17 Jan 92 00:04:08 PST From: pmacdona@sanjuan.UVic.CA (Peter MacDonald) To: linux-activists@joker.cs.hut.fi I have all of the features of VC working again, including screen blanking, screen dumping and using memory buffers so more consoles than your single page of video memory will allow can be used. These buffers use kernel memory, but would have been required when a windowing system comes along anyways. The unpleasant juddering of the screen when scrolling is also eliminated. Does anyone else see this or is it just me? Also, terminal reset is fixed. It wasn't resetting back from graphics char mode. Finally, I got rid of the check in setterm.c for the terminal type. But since setterm wasn't distributed with .12, it won't affect to many people. I will probably not release it for a few more days, so I can test it some more, and figure out whats going on with vt100 graphics chars, but if you are desperate to alpha test, drop me a note. The patches are not too extensive, and the main goal was to disturb .12 as little as possible. I have also written a poor persons version of ps. Actually, it is more like a skeleton. But it correctly gets info from the kernel, and runs as a standalone program rather than being. driven by function keys. However, it should be made to look more like what people are used to. If someone wants to volunteer to take it and extend it to have all the nice options, let me know. I think ps is one of those very system specific functions that we can not pull in from GNU. But, if you have an idea of what it should be modelled after (Sun?) speak up now. I am announcing all this so hopefully, duplication is avoided.