Re: console in 11.0-ALPHA4

Ed Maste wrote:
> On 20 June 2016 at 14:29, Ernie Luzar <luzar722_at_gmail.com> wrote:
>> I found the cause of this boot time message
>> "vicontrol: setting cursor type: Inappropriate ioctl for device"
>>
>> In my rc.conf I had this statement
>> vidcontrol -c blink -h 250
>> From testing it seems that vt does not handle the "blink" option for causing
>> the cursor to blink. Is there a vt option to enable cursor  blinking
> 
> I've submitted two PRs for the issues you reported here:
> Bug 210413 - vidcontrol -c <normal|blink|destructive> does not work with vt(4)
> Bug 210415 - vidcontrol -h <history size> does not work with vt(4) (edit)
> 
> There is currently no option to enable cursor blinking.


Further testing shows that:

1. The rc.conf option screen saver "saver= " and the "blanktime= " 
options work in vt for both text and graph modes.

2. The cursor copy/paste does not work in vt text mode. It only works in 
vt graph mode. vt needs to be fixed so copy/paste function also works in 
text mode.

3. Boot time splash screen does not work in vt at all no matter which 
mode is enabled. Using this in loader.conf
splash_bmp_load="YES"
bitmap_name="/boot/splash.bmp"
bitload_load="YES"

This works in 10.x. The splash screen function can not be allowed to be 
removed from the base system just because vt can not handle it. This 
also means any vt changes need to updated in the handbook section on 
splash screen.

In conclusion, vt is not ready to replace the sc console driver yet. vt 
needs to be fixed before becoming the default in 11.0. Using vt as the 
default console driver effects every user. It completely changes the 
FreeBSD experience. It's detrimental to the public relations and the 
professional image of FreeBSD to publish the 11.0-RELEASE using vt in 
its current condition. If time doesn't permit to get these vt things 
fixed before publishing 11.0 then vt should not become the default 
console driver.