Re: aranym text console
On Thu, May 24, 2007 at 03:46:27PM +0200, Petr Stehlik wrote:
> Wouter Verhelst wrote:
> >
> >Unfortunately, that isn't going to happen with the current state of
> >affairs, since it's impossible to get some sort of text output from the
> >console to a program outside of the emulator;
>
> there is a way of redirecting the kernel output to serial, parallel,
> midi (standard Atari ports) or to aranym debug output. Wouldn't this
> help?
The kernel output doesn't help, since it's the output of user space
software that's important.
> Or what kind of console output outside of the emulator you need?
The test lab needs to verify the installer's output to make sure that
everything ran as required (or to indicate that there's a bug in the
installer if not).
It *might* also be required for it to accept input, though I'm not sure
about that bit.
> Networking is of no help here?
No. The installer cannot easily be run over the network. It is possible;
for s390, this is exactly what's done. it's an ugly hack though, and
more importantly it's not the common usage pattern for m68k either,
whereas the point of this exercise is to automatically test the
installer for the m68k platform as it'll be used there.
The alternative (keeping logs of what happens from inside the installer
and saving them on the network afterwards) isn't very helpful, either,
since that method breaks the moment something happens that wasn't
foreseen.
> >Would it be possible to add in support for a serial line?
>
> I wouldn't like emulating another Atari chip so I'd rather add a simple
> natfeat driver to the linux kernel, if it is acceptable.
That would work, too. As long as one can interact with the emulator
using, say, perl or expect, that's okay.
> >Additionally, it would also be nice if the sdl usage could be disabled
> >with a simple command line switch, or so. Currently you have to have an
> >X server available, which isn't desirable for this type of usage.
>
> It's not easy to disable SDL in ARAnyM, I am afraid (perhaps the video
> output could be disabled, but not the SDL as a whole), but Xvfb or
> perhaps aalib SDL video driver could help here. Haven't tried that, though.
Yes, I thought of Xvfb, but that would make the whole setup rather
heavy, so it would be preferable if that wasn't necessary. But if it's
not easy to disable SDL, then that's okay -- we can cope with having to
run Xvfb, I guess.
--
Shaw's Principle:
Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will
want to use it.
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