DCONS(4)

💖 DCONS(4) 💖

okay bestie, welcome to the dcons page — that's the dumb console device driver, from the Kernel Interfaces Manual, section 4. yes she's literally called dumb, we love a humble queen 💅

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✨ NAME ✨

dcons — the dumb console device driver 🎀

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

so if you wanna compile this driver straight into your kernel, you gotta drop these lines into your kernel configuration file:

options GDB
device firewire
device dcons

or, plot twist, if you'd rather load it as a module at boot time instead, put this line in your kernel config file:

options GDB

and then in loader.conf(5) you go:

dcons_load="YES"

periodt. that's the whole setup 💖

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

okay so dcons is a simple console device — and when I say simple I mean she literally just reads from an allocated buffer and writes to an allocated buffer, for input and output respectively. that's it. that's the whole job. icon behaviour honestly 😌

she is of no use by herself — no cap, zero, nada. the whole plan is that some bus like firewire(4) or kvm(3) comes along and lets you interact with that buffer. she's the main character but she needs her supporting cast fr fr.

now the buffer? it's made of 4 channels. and there are 2 ports: one for the console TTY, and the other is the GDB port. then each one of those ports gets an input channel and an output channel. 2 ports × 2 channels = 4 channels, the math is mathing ✨

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🎀 FILES 🎀

• /dev/dcons
• /etc/ttys

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💅 EXAMPLES 💅

running getty on dcons

if you wanna run getty(8) on dcons, bestie you just insert this line into ttys(5):

dcons   "/usr/libexec/getty std.9600"   vt100   on  secure

and then send a HUP signal to init(8) using kill(1). slay 🔥

accessing the buffer from another host

once the fwohci(4) device is initialized so that physical access is allowed, the buffer can be accessed from another host through a firewire(4) bus, using the dconschat(8) application. obsessed. go read dconschat(8) if you want the full tea 🍓

using dcons as a gdb port

wanna use dcons as a gdb(1) port? say less. add this line into loader.conf(5):

dcons_gdb="1"

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🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

• dcons_crom(4)
• ddb(4)
• firewire(4)
• fwohci(4)
• gdb(4)
• ttys(5)
• conscontrol(8)
• dconschat(8)
• fwcontrol(8)

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👑 AUTHORS 👑

Hidetoshi Shimokawa <simokawa@FreeBSD.org> — thank you king, we appreciate you 🫶

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💀 BUGS 💀

This driver is currently under development.

she's still growing, she's in her development era, be nice to her 😭🙈

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kay that's the whole page bestie!! this one came from the Debian edition, dated January 26, 2008 — vintage fr, but still iconic 💜✨