The last half year I've been working on a replacement TTY layer for the
FreeBSD kernel. The new TTY layer was designed to improve the following:
- Improved driver model:
The old TTY layer has a driver model that is not abstract enough to
make it friendly to use. A good example is the output path, where the
device drivers directly access the output buffers. This means that an
in-kernel PPP implementation must always convert network buffers into
TTY buffers.
If a PPP implementation would be built on top of the new TTY layer
(still needs a hooks layer, though), it would allow the PPP
implementation to directly hand the data to the TTY driver.
- Improved hotplugging:
With the old TTY layer, it isn't entirely safe to destroy TTY's from
the system. This implementation has a two-step destructing design,
where the driver first abandons the TTY. After all threads have left
the TTY, the TTY layer calls a routine in the driver, which can be
used to free resources (unit numbers, etc).
The pts(4) driver also implements this feature, which means
posix_openpt() will now return PTY's that are created on the fly.
- Improved performance:
One of the major improvements is the per-TTY mutex, which is expected
to improve scalability when compared to the old Giant locking.
Another change is the unbuffered copying to userspace, which is both
used on TTY device nodes and PTY masters.
Upgrading should be quite straightforward. Unlike previous versions,
existing kernel configuration files do not need to be changed, except
when they reference device drivers that are listed in UPDATING.
Obtained from: //depot/projects/mpsafetty/...
Approved by: philip (ex-mentor)
Discussed: on the lists, at BSDCan, at the DevSummit
Sponsored by: Snow B.V., the Netherlands
dcons(4) fixed by: kan
Note ALL MODULES MUST BE RECOMPILED
make the kernel aware that there are smaller units of scheduling than the
process. (but only allow one thread per process at this time).
This is functionally equivalent to teh previousl -current except
that there is a thread associated with each process.
Sorry john! (your next MFC will be a doosie!)
Reviewed by: peter@freebsd.org, dillon@freebsd.org
X-MFC after: ha ha ha ha
palette. As a result, the colors on the video console can look rather
weird. For example, sysinstall on the alpha has a read background. We
can work around this partially by remapping the colors used by syscons for
the ANSI color escape sequences. Note that screen savers and anything that
sets the colors explicitly will still get incorrect colors, but programs
such as sysinstall will now use the correct colors. A more correct fix
would be to actually fix the VGA palette on boot by either swapping all
the red and blue attributes or by hardcoding a standard palette and
overwriting the entire palette.
Requested by: gallatin
Obtained from: NetBSD
won't appear on the screen, and "blinking" and "destructive" cursor
won't appear in the vty for which the text cursor is currently hidden.
Approved by: jkh
- Split terminal emulation code from the main part of the driver so
that we can have alternative terminal emulator modules if we like in
the future. (We are not quite there yet, though.)
- Put sysmouse related code in a separate file, thus, simplifying the
main part of the driver.
As some files are added to the source tree, you need to run config(8)
before you compile a new kernel next time.
You shouldn't see any functional change by this commit; this is only
internal code reorganization.
