So far we relied on the generic VGA layer to restore text console fonts for us when shutting down the server or VT switching back to the text console. This has worked rather well but it has some downsides on Linux: a. Many people use fbdev as console text mode. In this case it is not necessary to save/restore console fonts as the console is running in graphics mode anyway. b. Some architectures don't have a fbdev console but require a full POST of even the primary card (ie. IA64). This posting has to take place before we even have a chance to save anything. Therefore the fonts we save are the once written to the chip by POST, not what has been programmed by the user. c. Certain chipsets utilize the BIOS to perform mode setting. This may interfer with the vga save/restore font function in a strange way. It would therefore be preferrable to let the OS - which has been used to set up the font in the first place - take care of saving/restoring the data. I will attach a patch which will do so for Linux. To make this fully functional a small patch needs to be applied to the Linux kernel. See URL above.
Created attachment 1679 [details] [review] Described patch The above patch is enabled by default. It is expected to cause problems when a font with a different hight than the BIOS font is loaded. This goes away once the kernel gets fixed. To build without this new feature please add: #define DoOSFontRestore NO to your host.def.
Committed. Leaving open for further discussion.
Created attachment 1692 [details] [review] Check kernel version Alan Cox has requested on LKML that we should check the OS version to see if the kernel is able to support this feature. The attached patch implements this. It checks if the release number is < 2.6.11 and doesn't attempt to do font save/restore thru the kernel.
Kernel version check committed.
Can we close this meanwhile as FIXED?
I intentionally left it open just in case problems arise.
As no problems seems to have risen over the last year I'm closing this bug.
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