[vox-tech] Debian bf2.4 base kernel (disable framebuffer, enable ide DMA)

[Troy Arnold]

On Tue, Feb 18, 2003 at 04:46:03PM -0500, msimons@moria.simons-clan.com wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 25, 2002 at 02:52:41AM -0400, msimons@moria.simons-clan.com wrote:
> > I switched from VESA console to VGA console mode at kernel compile
> > time for a combination of the following reasons:
> >   - I can't *STAND* a blinking block cursor... I couldn't figure out
> >     how to slow the blink rate *or* change to a line cursor.
> >   - VESA mode is *dog* slow.
> 
>   For a long time I had been recompiling the stock debian install kernels
> to do a number of things:
> - get rid of the VGA VESA frame buffer mode that is enabled in that kernel.
> - the stock kernels don't enabled DMA mode by default on many systems.
> 
>   This weekend I discovered that you can turn off the vesa frame buffer
> with a boot time command line option:
> ===
> video=vga16:off
> ===

Yup, it's documented in Debian's lilo.conf along with:
#vga=ask

Which gives you some other modes to choose from.  The mode that I
happen to prefer is not in the list:
vga=0x305

A moot point if you're in X all night...

>   Also one can enable dma mode with another boottime option:
> ===
> ide0=dma ide1=dma
> ===

Didn't know about that one...

There's also the 'hdparm' command:
hdparm -d 1 -m16 /dev/hda
-d 1 == turn on DMA
-m16 == turn on multi-sector IO

These two options vastly improve performance on modern IDE drives.

hdparm -i /dev/<device> will give you some hints about what your
drive(s) may handle.  Also, the hdparm man page is well-written and
concise.


Thanks for the tips. 

-troy