xforcevesa?

[Marc Herbert]

Hi,

 Is there a Fedora equivalent to the "xforcevesa" boot parameter?

If there is none I will probably need some day to port the Ubuntu
one. Would this of interest to Fedora?

Regards,

Marc

[Jasper Hartline]

On Wed, Aug 4, 2010 at 7:13 AM, Marc Herbert <Marc.Herbert(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
>  Hi,
>
>   Is there a Fedora equivalent to the "xforcevesa" boot parameter? 
Anaconda has xdriver where you can specify VESA, e.g. xdriver=vesa

[Marc Herbert]

Le 04/08/2010 16:35, Jasper Hartline a écrit :
>  On Wed, Aug 4, 2010 at 7:13 AM, Marc Herbert
> <Marc.Herbert-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w(a)public.gmane.org&gt; wrote:
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> >  Is there a Fedora equivalent to the "xforcevesa" boot parameter?
>  
>  Anaconda has xdriver where you can specify VESA, e.g. xdriver=vesa 
Thanks Jasper,

 I am actually only interested in the liveCD where "xdriver" does not seem
to be implemented.

How hard would it be to port xdriver from the installer? Easier than
Ubuntu's xforcevesa I guess?

Cheers,

Marc

[Jasper Hartline]

On Wed, Aug 4, 2010 at 9:59 AM, Marc Herbert <Marc.Herbert(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
>   I am actually only interested in the liveCD where
> "xdriver" does not seem
>  to be implemented.
>
>  How hard would it be to port xdriver from the installer? Easier than
>  Ubuntu's xforcevesa I guess? 
vga=ask or vga=<code> are kernel VESA BIOS modes that you can use on
the livecds.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VESA_BIOS_Extensions#Linux_video_mode_numbers

I am not sure what xforcevesa does really so I am not sure if it is an
equivalent
or can be ported. The above would work on any 2.6 kernel presumably.

[Marc Herbert]

>  vga=ask or vga=<code> are kernel VESA BIOS modes that you can
> use on
>  the livecds.
>  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VESA_BIOS_Extensions#Linux_video_mode_numbers 
I think these are ignored by Xorg.


> >  Is there a Fedora equivalent to the "xforcevesa" boot
> parameter?
>  
>  Anaconda has xdriver where you can specify VESA, e.g. xdriver=vesa
>  [...]
>  I am not sure what xforcevesa does really  

"xforcevesa" forces Xorg to use the VESA driver. Please note and
admire the unusual feat of a terse boot paramater doing exactly what
its name says. You would typically combine this with "nomodeset"

<https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BootOptions#Installer options (user-land)>

The main visible effect of xforcevesa is to simply generate a dummy
xorg.conf file with a "Driver vesa" line. This happens early, even
when booting in single user mode. Dunno about the rest, if any.

xforcevesa is (part of?) what Ubuntu calls "Safe Graphics Mode",
codenamed https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BulletProofX. Google will find a lot
of pages about it.

xforcevesa applies to (Ubuntu) live images (unlike xdriver=vesa? Disappointing)

Would "Fedora live" have any interest in such a feature? It looks very useful
to me. Especially since Intel increased "commitment" in Xorg.

[Jasper Hartline]

When I said I am not sure what it does, I was referring to it's actual
operations.
Not it's purpose. What software does and it's purpose are sometimes
two different things.
Look at bugs as a good example.

On Thu, Aug 5, 2010 at 5:14 AM, Marc Herbert <Marc.Herbert(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
> > I am not sure what xforcevesa does really
>
>
>  "xforcevesa" forces Xorg to use the VESA driver. Please note and
>  admire the unusual feat of a terse boot paramater doing exactly what
>  its name says. You would typically combine this with "nomodeset"

[Mads Kiilerich]

  Marc Herbert wrote, On 08/04/2010 06:59 PM:
>  Le 04/08/2010 16:35, Jasper Hartline a écrit :
> > On Wed, Aug 4, 2010 at 7:13 AM, Marc
> Herbert<Marc.Herbert-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w(a)public.gmane.org>  wrote:
> >> Hi,
> >>
> >>   Is there a Fedora equivalent to the "xforcevesa" boot parameter?
> > Anaconda has xdriver where you can specify VESA, e.g. xdriver=vesa
>  Thanks Jasper,
>
>    I am actually only interested in the liveCD where "xdriver" does not seem
>  to be implemented.
>
>  How hard would it be to port xdriver from the installer? Easier than
>  Ubuntu's xforcevesa I guess? 
I guess that should be a general Fedora feature? Something that 
overrules the automatic driver detection based on the rules in 
/usr/share/hwdata/videoaliases/ ?

How and where is xforcevesa implemented?

/Mads

[Thorsten Leemhuis]

Mads Kiilerich wrote on 08.08.2010 20:12:
>  [...]
>  I guess that should be a general Fedora feature? 
In case anybody is interested: I was in the need to foce Vesa in the
past and added below *hack* to a kickstart file somewhere in the
fedora-live-base.ks section between
|cat > /etc/rc.d/init.d/livesys-late << EOF
and
|EOF
to make "xdriver=vesa" work on the livecd.

CU
knurd

P.S.: Yes, it has bugs (hardcoded german keyboard and only works with
"vesa"), that's why I called it a hack earlier ;-)

"""
# configure X, allowing user to override xdriver
if [ "\$xdriver" == "vesa" ]; then
  cat > /etc/X11/xorg.conf <<FOE
# Xorg configuration created by system-config-display
Section "ServerLayout"
	Identifier     "Default Layout"
	Screen      0  "Screen0" 0 0
	InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
# keyboard added by system-config-display
	Identifier  "Keyboard0"
	Driver      "kbd"
	Option	    "XkbModel" "pc105"
	Option	    "XkbLayout" "de"
EndSection

Section "Device"
	Identifier  "Videocard0"
	Driver      "\$xdriver"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
	Identifier  "Monitor0"
	HorizSync    30-69
	VertRefresh  60-75
EndSection

Section "Screen"
	Identifier "Screen0"
	Device     "Videocard0"
	Monitor    "Monitor0"
	SubSection "Display"
		Modes "1024x768" "800x600"
	EndSubSection
EndSection
FOE
fi
"""