Xen devel - Jul 2005 - Re: beginnings of allowing more than the basic 80x25 VGAscreen resolution

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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