linux/Documentation
Helge Deller 87ab9f6b74 Revert "fbcon: Disable accelerated scrolling"
This reverts commit 39aead8373.

Revert the first (of 2) commits which disabled scrolling acceleration in
fbcon/fbdev.  It introduced a regression for fbdev-supported graphic cards
because of the performance penalty by doing screen scrolling by software
instead of using the existing graphic card 2D hardware acceleration.

Console scrolling acceleration was disabled by dropping code which
checked at runtime the driver hardware capabilities for the
BINFO_HWACCEL_COPYAREA or FBINFO_HWACCEL_FILLRECT flags and if set, it
enabled scrollmode SCROLL_MOVE which uses hardware acceleration to move
screen contents.  After dropping those checks scrollmode was hard-wired
to SCROLL_REDRAW instead, which forces all graphic cards to redraw every
character at the new screen position when scrolling.

This change effectively disabled all hardware-based scrolling acceleration for
ALL drivers, because now all kind of 2D hardware acceleration (bitblt,
fillrect) in the drivers isn't used any longer.

The original commit message mentions that only 3 DRM drivers (nouveau, omapdrm
and gma500) used hardware acceleration in the past and thus code for checking
and using scrolling acceleration is obsolete.

This statement is NOT TRUE, because beside the DRM drivers there are around 35
other fbdev drivers which depend on fbdev/fbcon and still provide hardware
acceleration for fbdev/fbcon.

The original commit message also states that syzbot found lots of bugs in fbcon
and thus it's "often the solution to just delete code and remove features".
This is true, and the bugs - which actually affected all users of fbcon,
including DRM - were fixed, or code was dropped like e.g. the support for
software scrollback in vgacon (commit 973c096f6a).

So to further analyze which bugs were found by syzbot, I've looked through all
patches in drivers/video which were tagged with syzbot or syzkaller back to
year 2005. The vast majority fixed the reported issues on a higher level, e.g.
when screen is to be resized, or when font size is to be changed. The few ones
which touched driver code fixed a real driver bug, e.g. by adding a check.

But NONE of those patches touched code of either the SCROLL_MOVE or the
SCROLL_REDRAW case.

That means, there was no real reason why SCROLL_MOVE had to be ripped-out and
just SCROLL_REDRAW had to be used instead. The only reason I can imagine so far
was that SCROLL_MOVE wasn't used by DRM and as such it was assumed that it
could go away. That argument completely missed the fact that SCROLL_MOVE is
still heavily used by fbdev (non-DRM) drivers.

Some people mention that using memcpy() instead of the hardware acceleration is
pretty much the same speed. But that's not true, at least not for older graphic
cards and machines where we see speed decreases by factor 10 and more and thus
this change leads to console responsiveness way worse than before.

That's why the original commit is to be reverted. By reverting we
reintroduce hardware-based scrolling acceleration and fix the
performance regression for fbdev drivers.

There isn't any impact on DRM when reverting those patches.

Signed-off-by: Helge Deller <deller@gmx.de>
Acked-by: Geert Uytterhoeven <geert@linux-m68k.org>
Acked-by: Sven Schnelle <svens@stackframe.org>
Cc: stable@vger.kernel.org # v5.10+
Signed-off-by: Helge Deller <deller@gmx.de>
Signed-off-by: Daniel Vetter <daniel.vetter@ffwll.ch>
Link: https://patchwork.freedesktop.org/patch/msgid/20220202135531.92183-3-deller@gmx.de
2022-02-02 15:15:11 +01:00
..
ABI f2fs-for-5.17-rc1 2022-01-19 11:50:20 +02:00
accounting Documentation/accounting/delay-accounting.rst: add thrashing page cache and direct compact 2022-01-20 08:52:55 +02:00
admin-guide Merge branch 'kvm-pi-raw-spinlock' into HEAD 2022-01-19 12:14:02 -05:00
arc docs: ARC: Improve readability 2021-12-10 14:28:01 -07:00
arm Documentation: arm: marvell: Fix link to armada_1000_pb.pdf document 2021-11-15 02:49:56 -07:00
arm64 Merge branches 'for-next/misc', 'for-next/cache-ops-dzp', 'for-next/stacktrace', 'for-next/xor-neon', 'for-next/kasan', 'for-next/armv8_7-fp', 'for-next/atomics', 'for-next/bti', 'for-next/sve', 'for-next/kselftest' and 'for-next/kcsan', remote-tracking branch 'arm64/for-next/perf' into for-next/core 2022-01-05 18:14:32 +00:00
block docs: block: remove queue-sysfs.rst 2022-01-09 18:59:10 -07:00
bpf bpf, docs: Fully document the JMP mode modifiers 2022-01-05 13:11:26 -08:00
cdrom
core-api Convert xfs/iomap to use folios 2022-01-12 12:51:41 -08:00
cpu-freq cpufreq: docs: Update core.rst 2021-12-01 20:02:11 +01:00
crypto crypto: engine - Add KPP Support to Crypto Engine 2021-10-29 21:04:03 +08:00
dev-tools This isn't a hugely busy cycle for documentation, but a few significant 2022-01-11 10:00:04 -08:00
devicetree Devicetree fixes for v5.17, take 1: 2022-01-22 09:52:17 +02:00
doc-guide docs: discourage use of list tables 2022-01-07 09:33:13 -07:00
driver-api Three small documentation fixes. 2022-01-22 09:02:57 +02:00
fault-injection
fb
features ARM: 9158/1: leave it to core code to manage thread_info::cpu 2021-12-17 11:34:31 +00:00
filesystems The highlight is the new mount "device" string syntax implemented 2022-01-20 13:46:20 +02:00
firmware_class
firmware-guide Device properties framework updates for 5.17-rc1 2022-01-10 20:48:19 -08:00
fpga
gpu Revert "fbcon: Disable accelerated scrolling" 2022-02-02 15:15:11 +01:00
hid
hwmon hwmon/pmbus: (ir38064) Add support for IR38060, IR38164 IR38263 2021-12-26 15:02:07 -08:00
i2c Docs: Fixes link to I2C specification 2021-12-31 14:39:28 +01:00
ia64
ide
iio
infiniband
input
isdn
kbuild doc: kbuild: fix default in imply table 2022-01-08 18:28:21 +09:00
kernel-hacking
leds
litmus-tests
livepatch Documentation: livepatch: Add livepatch API page 2021-12-23 11:35:53 +01:00
locking Documentation/locking/locktypes: Update migrate_disable() bits. 2021-11-30 15:40:31 +01:00
m68k
maintainer
mhi
mips
misc-devices
netlabel
networking This isn't a hugely busy cycle for documentation, but a few significant 2022-01-11 10:00:04 -08:00
nios2
nvdimm
openrisc
parisc
PCI
pcmcia
power Merge branches 'pm-opp', 'pm-devfreq' and 'powercap' 2022-01-10 18:00:31 +01:00
powerpc
process Kbuild updates for v5.17 2022-01-19 11:15:19 +02:00
RCU Merge branches 'doc.2021.11.30c', 'exp.2021.12.07a', 'fastnohz.2021.11.30c', 'fixes.2021.11.30c', 'nocb.2021.12.09a', 'nolibc.2021.11.30c', 'tasks.2021.12.09a', 'torture.2021.12.07a' and 'torturescript.2021.11.30c' into HEAD 2021-12-09 11:38:09 -08:00
riscv riscv: Move KASAN mapping next to the kernel mapping 2022-01-19 17:54:04 -08:00
s390
scheduler docs/scheduler: fix typo and warning in sched-bwc 2021-12-06 12:15:49 -07:00
scsi
security docs: update self-protection __ro_after_init status 2021-12-10 14:02:06 -07:00
sh
sound ALSA: hda/realtek: Add new alc285-hp-amp-init model 2021-12-14 10:44:26 +01:00
sparc
sphinx docs: automarkup.py: Fix invalid HTML link output and broken URI fragments 2022-01-07 09:32:58 -07:00
sphinx-static docs: add support for RTD dark mode 2021-12-10 14:05:55 -07:00
spi spi: pxa2xx: Get rid of unused enable_loopback member 2021-11-29 12:20:00 +00:00
staging Three small documentation fixes. 2022-01-22 09:02:57 +02:00
target
timers rcu: Remove the RCU_FAST_NO_HZ Kconfig option 2021-11-30 17:24:47 -08:00
tools/rtla rtla: Add rtla timerlat hist documentation 2022-01-13 17:02:44 -05:00
trace Three small documentation fixes. 2022-01-22 09:02:57 +02:00
translations driver core changes for 5.17-rc1 2022-01-12 11:11:34 -08:00
tty Documentation: add TTY chapter 2021-11-26 16:27:43 +01:00
usb docs: ABI: fixed req_number desc in UAC1 2021-12-30 12:10:44 +01:00
userspace-api Merge branch 'acpi-pfrut' 2022-01-17 18:25:57 +01:00
virt Generic: 2022-01-22 09:40:01 +02:00
vm frontswap: remove frontswap_shrink 2022-01-22 08:33:38 +02:00
w1
watchdog
x86 x86/sgx: Fix minor documentation issues 2021-11-17 06:36:09 -08:00
xtensa
.gitignore
arch.rst docs: Add documentation for ARC processors 2021-11-29 14:53:11 -07:00
asm-annotations.rst
atomic_bitops.txt
atomic_t.txt
Changes
CodingStyle
conf.py docs: add support for RTD dark mode 2021-12-10 14:05:55 -07:00
COPYING-logo
docutils.conf
dontdiff
index.rst Documentation: add TTY chapter 2021-11-26 16:27:43 +01:00
Kconfig
logo.gif
Makefile docs: address some text issues with css/theme support 2021-12-16 15:54:12 -07:00
memory-barriers.txt asm-generic: introduce io_stop_wc() and add implementation for ARM64 2021-12-22 10:44:53 +00:00
SubmittingPatches
watch_queue.rst