[SOLVED] Uvesafb compiled into the kernel.

Question

I'm having some trouble getting uvesafb to work...
As far as I know, compiling it into the kernel is possible, but when I do I can't get it to work the following appears at boot time:
uvesafb: failed to execute /sbin/v86d
uvesafb: make sure that the v86d helper is installed and executable
uvesafb: Getting VBE info block failed (eax=0x4f00, err=-2)
uvesafb: vbe_init() failed with -22
uvesafb: probe of uvesafb.0 failed with error -22
v86d is correctly installed and in place so I don't know why it's finding it. As I have /boot in a separate partition I tried even copying the executable to /, /boot and /boot/grub and changing where to find it in the kernel command line, none of it worked.
I was able to get it to work compiling it as a module and specifying it in the MODULES array in the kernel (I'm not using initramfs so I can't specify it in the mods array in mkinitcpio.conf), but it started way to late.
Any suggestion?
Thank you very much.
Last edited by MickST (2010-06-03 20:19:34)

Answer 1

I'm thinking it can not find v86d that early in the boot process, for the simple reason that your root filesystem is not mounted yet.
Perhaps a way to solve that would be to include the neccessary files to run v86d in the initramfs, but you are not using initramfs. And I do not know of another easy way to include the files that quick in the boot process.
But I am curious about something, why does uvesafb start "way too late" for you? You want to be able to read your kernel messages roll by in the full resolution of your screen? Want to get a fancy bootscreen using a splash of some sort? Another reason?
Last edited by Ultraman (2010-06-03 16:25:16)