console progress

[Marcus Brinkmann]

Hi,

good news from the console front.  I was able to fix two server bugs, and now
the display is correct for all programs I tested, including emacs, mutt and
others.

Beside the old way of testing this I wrote in my past mails (don't forget to
update your hurd terminfo file), you can do the following:

# settrans -c /dev/pccon /hurd/console
# settrans -c /dev/tty1 /hurd/term /dev/tty1 hurdio /dev/pccon/1/console
# settrans -c /dev/tty2 /hurd/term /dev/tty2 hurdio /dev/pccon/2/console
# settrans -c /dev/tty3 /hurd/term /dev/tty3 hurdio /dev/pccon/3/console
# settrans -c /dev/tty4 /hurd/term /dev/tty4 hurdio /dev/pccon/4/console

Add the following lines to /etc/ttys:
tty1    "/libexec/getty 9600"           hurd    on      secure trusted console
tty2    "/libexec/getty 9600"           hurd    on      secure trusted console
tty3    "/libexec/getty 9600"           hurd    on      secure trusted console
tty4    "/libexec/getty 9600"           hurd    on      secure trusted console

Reboot.  Log in as root and do:
# console-client-unix /dev/pccon

And voila, you have four virtual consoles witha getty on each (read: login
shell).  The LINES variable will be 24, so I suggest to do "export LINES=25"
after logging in to get the whole screen.  Beside this, it should work just
fine.

You can also try out to login to the Hurd remotely and run
console-client-unix again.  You should get the virtual consoles there, too. 
This demonstrates the multi-attach feature.

Console switching: C-w NR, where NR is 1, 2, 3 or 4 (in the above example).
Console client exit: C-w x.  You can reattach at any later time.  This does
not affect the programs running on the virtual consoles.

That's how far as usability and demonstrable features go.  Remember that the
performance of the output (in particular scrolling) is limited by ncurses'
performance.  It's acceptable, although it flickers quite a lot when
scrolling massively.  And there are glitches when running aafire and other
animations.  I am willing to accept that for the curses client and hope for
something better with the VGA client I will start soon. ;)

There are some known bugs, but please report any to me you encounter, if you
try it out.

Thanks,
Marcus

-- 
`Rhubarb is no Egyptian god.' Debian http://www.debian.org brinkmd@debian.org
Marcus Brinkmann              GNU    http://www.gnu.org    marcus@gnu.org
Marcus.Brinkmann@ruhr-uni-bochum.de
http://www.marcus-brinkmann.de