On Mon, Mar 23, 2015 at 4:18 PM Kevin O'Connor kevin@koconnor.net wrote:
Just to be clear, it's fine to try initializing the video card in SeaBIOS, it's fine to try initializing the video card in coreboot, and it's fine to try and hold off initialization until Linux starts. But, definitely don't try booting with two or more points trying to initialize the video hardware - that's known to cause problems.
This is great advice and probably true for most hardware most of the time. But I have seen hardware (as part of debugging) that can cope with multiple init passes. For example, on many new intel parts, the VBIOS runs, and then sometimes X11 decides to run it again. Or, you modprobe -r and when you modprobe again, it it will do the hardware init again. Or x11 decides to run the init again for other reasons. Or the kernel modules does. Or Ron does as part of FUI testing.
So I think kevin is making a very good point but as always, with hardware, the rules can be broken :-) ron