From: mentalg@geocities.com
  To  : ggi-develop@eskimo.com
  Date: Wed, 9 Sep 1998 14:59:39 -0400 (EDT)

Re: generic monitor test result

On Wed, 9 Sep 1998, Alexander Larsson wrote:

> > >  Ideally this could be fixed by login doing a chown on the fb device, maybe 
> > > m68k login does this. x86 most certainly doesn't.
> > 
> > what about two user wanting to run two different X server or some stupid
> > stuff like that ?
>  Ehhh... I don't quite follow. Do you mean two people logged in via the 
> console at the same time, and both wants to run an x server on the same 
> framebuffer?

>  I don't know if multiple processes can have /dev/fb0 open at the same time. 

Eww.  Well, really what KGI was supposed to allow were things like several
users each running a (non-suid) X server on different VCs on the same
device.  (very useful if you walk away, fire up Xlock, and someone else
wants to come along and log in and use X too while you're gone...).
Didn't/Doesn't KGI have one /dev/graph* device per VC?

I guess the thing is that fbcon wasn't really designed with that sort of
thing in mind.

It's the different VCs sharing a single /dev/fb* device that maintains the
need for root access.  Additionally, when you just have the one device,
there's no easy way to "cut off" a program on one console from reading the
framebuffer while you're switched to another console...

(unmmapping the framebuffer for a VC on switchaway and blanking the
framebuffer on VC switchback would be a good idea)

So I guess now the question is: how do we get back to a device file per tty 
with kgicon?  It seems that if nothing else, the current device file setup
requires root access, unless you don't care about security.

-=MenTaLguY=-