Re: newcons comming

On Sun, Nov 03, 2013 at 11:16:53PM -0800, Kevin Oberman wrote:
|    On Thu, Oct 31, 2013 at 2:01 PM, Doug Ambrisko <ambrisko_at_ambrisko.com>
|    wrote:
| 
|      On Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 03:18:47PM +0300, Aleksandr Rybalko wrote:
|      | Hello fellow hackers!
|      |
|      | I finally reach the point when I can work with newcons instead of
|      | syscons on my laptop. Yes, I know it still buggy and have a lot of
|      | style(9) problems. But we really have to get it into HEAD and 10.0 to
|      | enable shiny new Xorg features, drivers, etc.
| 
|      I built the kernel from:
|      A  A  A  A  base/user/ed/newcons/
|      and installed it on my new ThinkPad T530 with Intel graphics chip.
|      In general it works better since now syspend and resume works with
|      and without X. A However, as with my prior ThinkPads I need to switch
|      out of X to suspend and resume. A So I have vidcontrol -s 1 in my
|      /etc/rc.suspend and vidcontrol -s 9 in /etc/rc.resume. A If I don't
|      the display ends up corrupted but somewhat working.
| 
|      I had to kldload i915kms in /etc/rc.local since having it there at
|      boot via /boot/loader.conf resulted in the system not booting. A I need
|      i915kms for X so I don't need to use vesa mode.
| 
|      The FreeBSD logo on boot is interesting but I'd prefer seeing
|      FreeBSD boot messages to see what is happening. A I'm not sure if
|      there is a flag to disable that since I have played with it much.
| 
|      However, on a whole it is much improved since with i915kms and
|      newcons when in X via vesa I couldn't switch to a non-X display
|      since it was blank.
| 
|    Excellent news. I'm really looking forward to newcons. Guess it's time to
|    move my T520 to 10-Stable (or Beta)
|    .
|    Since I'm not running 10, I may simply be clueless. If so, please ignore
|    the rest of this.

Newcons isn't in 10 yet but in its own branch.
 
|    Are you booting directly to X or using startx from the console? In either
|    case, I think that i915kms should auto-load at the start of X, so you
|    should not need to pre-load it.

I use XDM to start X.  Auto load might not quite work for me since I
run X in a vimage jail.  I find it easier to keep my base system a
minimal install to start up a bounch of vimage jails.  I have two
"mains" that are FreeBSD -current that I leap frog and then have a couple of
-stable release (ie. 9.0 and 9.2 now) that I use to build ports.  I
nulls mount the /var/db/pkg, /usr/local and /usr/ports of that release
between those so my ports tend to be fixed in time.  I have some patches
to jail to allow any sysctls and to set what the OS reports for uname etc.
Then pkg_add, ports builds thinks it is running on that version of FreeBSD
(ie. 9.2 release).  This makes it easier for me to run -current and let me
add things without issue later on trying to add something new.  I do have
to build modules outside so it is in sync. with my base OS.
 
|    Does newcons require VESA? If not, you should be able to remove it from
|    your kernel to get suspend/resume working from X.

As soon as I went to newcons the suspend and resume started to work.
I don't have vesa kldload or static in the kernel.  I auto switch out
of X on suspend and switch back to X on resume to ensure that on resume
the X display isn't messed up (lines shifted etc.).  If I don't do this
then the X gets messed up.  I can see stuff working on the LCD it's just
messed up.

Brightness seems messed up, I patched acpi_video to also set the 2nd
LCD (SB.PCI0.PEG.VID.LCD0._BCM) so that works since the keys don't work.
However when X comes back from resume or dpms then it is full bridgtness.
So I need to figure that out.  I also run into the "N" compatibility issue
with the iwn 6205 that Sean did so I #ifdef'ed that out like he did.  Now
the 6205 works fine.  My other laptop with a 5300 didn't have this issue.

My only real problem right now is that this new laptop came with a defective
key so I'm waiting to get that replaced and then I'll switch to it.

Thanks,

Doug A.