> 
> Matthew green wrote (in his message from Mon 22)
>  > 
>  > (ps, is this to get around some lossage on the i386  ?  :-)
> 
> Yes. root is basically needed to get access to i/o operations on the
> VGA cards. This is very difficult to suppress. It would mean:
> 
> 1. Write a device driver for each different graphic board on the
>    market (it should probably implement the mi level of the Xserver to
>    be safe)
> 2. Have XFree86 (and the other available servers) use them.
> 

Which would mean that NetBSD would have exactly 1 Xserver program
that would run on all supported platforms, where these devices exist.

What's the problem? I like this idea. Now granted, that's alot of work
to get the MI layer of the server into a thing suitable for kernel mode,
and it would add to the kernel somewhat, but it would be cool. I mean,
one Xserver program, and a generic kernel for each platform that
supports all of the cards (big kernel!). None of this "Did you get
the Xthis server or the Xthat server" garbage that we have to deal with
now.

Did they ever figure out how to have a LKM device driver get it's /dev
entries in place and stuff?

XCOMM --------------------------------------------------------
XCOMM Kevin P. Neal, Sophomore CSC/CPE     kpneal@eos.ncsu.edu 
XCOMM North Carolina State University      kevinneal@bix.com
XCOMM --------------------------------------------------------