mdacon messing up default vc's - set default to vc13-16 again
mdacon incorrectly detects MDA hardware on systems without such graphics card. One may load this module by chance, for example when doing some systematical module-testing, and if there is no Monochrome Display Adapter attached , module init renders vc1-16 completely unusable. I and others have run into this more than once. see [Bug 224522 - modprobe mdacon freezes machine -> https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=224522 ] for example Apparently proper MDA detection seems to be broken for a long time - seems to be related to those #ifdef TEST_MDA_B statements added by Edward Betts. this commit back in 2002 made things even worse : http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/tglx/history.git;a=commit;h=c72757b49c88914433244757fb4967fc63546685 It changed default vc allocation from 13-16 to 1-16 for no apparent reason (!?) , and with that (and without X), mdacon grabs the vc you`re currently sitting on and locks you out. this is from Kconfig : >config MDA_CONSOLE > depends on !M68K && !PARISC && ISA > tristate "MDA text console (dual-headed) (EXPERIMENTAL)" > ---help--- > Say Y here if you have an old MDA or monochrome Hercules graphics > adapter in your system acting as a second head ( = video card). You > will then be able to use two monitors with your Linux system. Do not > say Y here if your MDA card is the primary card in your system; the > normal VGA driver will handle it. As we can see mdacon is just meant as an additional driver for dual-head setup, and since kernel 2.4.36 still defaults to vc13-16 , setting the default back to that value again shouldn`t do any harm. Hereby i'm reverting that change, setting default back to to vc13-16 again. Besides the fact that mdacon may be rarely or never be used these days and could perhaps put to trash anyway (pre-dinosaur hardware!), indeed this is not a real solution, but at least it removes the unfortunate side-effect of messing up the vc you`re working on. Signed-off-by: Roland Kletzing <devzero@web.de> Cc: James Simmons <jsimmons@infradead.org> Cc: "Antonino A. Daplas" <adaplas@pol.net> Cc: Tim Schmielau <tim@physik3.uni-rostock.de> Cc: Jan Engelhardt <jengelh@gmx.de> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
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