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Bug#755739: VGA-mode newcons very slow



On 25/07/14 19:42, Ed Maste wrote:
> vt(4), text mode:
> kern.vty=vt
> hw.vga.textmode=1

Thanks, I didn't realise the new vt(4) actually still has a text mode.

> It should be possible to start with hw.vga.textmode=1 and then have
> i915kms take over once X starts, giving graphics-mode consoles from
> that point on.

Sounds like we'd want to do that.  Basically we'd like to be able to use
KMS and still have a working console.

Graphics mode would someday allow us to enable more languages, but
probably not until we port everything needed to load fonts, and some
Asian font sets become available.

I'd personally like to keep text mode as default, to keep maximum
compatibility with text console support in virtualisation products,
onboard BMCs and such.

> Can you quantify "very slow?"  I've been testing vt(4) in QEMU on my
> FreeBSD host (so no KVM involved), and it's acceptably performant on
> my 8-core i7-3770 desktop.

>From memory it slowed boot from ~30 seconds to at least 3 minutes,
apparently due to the delay in scrolling console text in VGA mode.

Our kfreebsd-10 has a backport of vt(4) from some time ago, so the cause
of this may have been fixed already.  I'll re-test this with 10-STABLE
as soon as I can.

Regards,
-- 
Steven Chamberlain
steven@pyro.eu.org


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