Sharing Framebuffers between Client / Server

[Rian Quinn]

I am working on a client/server program, where the server creates (and has access to a framebuffer), and then needs to share this framebuffer with a client program so that this client program can draw into the framebuffer directly (i.e. no memcpy). 

I am trying to figureout what the “cleanest” way to do this is, such that I can support Intel’s proprietary driver, the open source AMD and NVidia drivers, and the VMWare driver (I have no need for the proprietary ADM/NVidia drivers right now). From what I can tell, GEM is one way to do this. The problem is VMWare doesn’t support GEM. 


I tried (knowing it would not work), using KMS to create the framebuffer, and then sending the information needed to mmap to the client. This of course failed because the framebuffer is marked non-sharable in the kernel. 


To be clear, I am fine having to manually write ioctls for each driver, if thats what it takes. But at this point, I am at a loss on the best method to share scannot buffers (or at least in a way that doesn’t make someone cringe when they see my code).


Thanks,
- Rian 

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