[Xorg] The big multiconsole nasty

[Michel Dänzer]

On Tue, 2004-07-06 at 20:28 -0700, Jon Smirl wrote:
> --- Keith Packard <keithp at keithp.com> wrote:
> > One thing I'd like to see is a general reduction of code that runs in
> > the same address space as the 'scary' bits.  Starting with the device
> > initialization and mode selection logic makes good sense as none of
> > that is particularily performance sensitive.  This should give us
> > significant freedom of choice in implementation.
> 
> Mode setting code is large. If you add up everything for the radeon it
> is about 100K. Parts of this need to be in the kernel. For example the
> Linux kernel has a well defined framework for I2C (used to retrieve
> DDC). The IOCTL that actually sets the mode bits into the registers
> should be in the kernel to remove the need for X to be root. But those
> two things add up to about 5K of code.

I've said it many times, I'll say it again: I consider this a myth. The
register values don't become magically secure just because the kernel
writes them to the hardware instead of a user process. A good part of
the mode setting code will always have to be privileged one way or the
other.


-- 
Earthling Michel Dänzer      |     Debian (powerpc), X and DRI developer
Libre software enthusiast    |   http://svcs.affero.net/rm.php?r=daenzer