Re: [Xen-users] VNC console access in paravirtualized domUs

["Ray Barnes" <tical.net@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, Jun 7, 2008 at 9:14 AM, jim burns <jim_burn@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I believe I mentioned that the fbdev frame buffer is what is used by xen 3.1.2
> and up. CentOS 5[.1] uses a xen 3.0.3 with 3.1 forward ports. I would doubt
> it changed over to fbdev, since that change was introduced in F8 after CentOS
> 5.1 had been out for awhile.

Got it.  Please bear with me as I'm relatively noobish on this
subject.  First off, I did replace my xorg.conf with yours - no
change, but I've got a pretty good idea why it doesn't work (below).
At the risk of generating more (potentially useless) list traffic,
here's what I've done as of late:

I found http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=398056 which
purports that the framebuffer simply doesn't work under kernel
versions prior to 2.6.25-1 under Debian (granted the platform is k7
not 686, but I assumed that to be true on 686 for the moment since I
have no desire to weed through endless changelogs).  So I upgraded
Lenny to Sid which has 2.6.25-2, figuring it wouldn't hurt (hopefully)
to have the newer kernel.  What I found is there's still no generation
of /dev/fb0.  If I 'insmod vfb.ko' (not sure if that's appropriate or
not), I get "-1 No such device or address" returned.  All of vfb.ko's
module dependencies are loading fine.  I can also 'insmod vga16fb.ko'
which works and outputs:

vga16fb: mapped to 0xc00a0000
Console: switching to colour frame buffer device 80x30
fb0: VGA16 VGA frame buffer device

as seen by dmesg.  So now I have a /dev/fb0 which goes nowhere as Xen
won't attach it.  I tried sticking the vga16fb module in the initrd;
it loads right after I get the "XENBUS: Device with no driver:
device/vfb/0" message on the console.  It never connects up
subsequently either, as I see "xenbus_dev_shutdown: device/vfb/0:
Initialising != Connected, skipping" - not sure if xen would make any
attempt to connect up if the driver were subsequently exposed, so
forgive me if that sounds dumb.  I've also read about a new driver
called "pvfb" which was introduced into the kernel earlier this year -
not sure what bearing that has on things, or if it makes fbdev
obsolete in some way.

-Ray

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