>> What controls the colours used for console text output before wscons >> takes over? [...]
>> So there's clearly something I don't understand going on. What? > That's all wscons; drmkms taking over isn't the same step as wscons > taking over. Okay, that's _one_ thing I didn't understand.... :-) > But anyway: my guess is that you can't use the bright colors. I > vaguely recall some issue with that long ago... I just trawled for WSCOL_ in the kernel source tree. The only thing I see that could be responsible is this, in dev/rcons/rcons_subr.c: /* Set ANSI colors */ void rcons_setcolor(struct rconsole *rc, int fg, int bg) { int flg; if (fg > WSCOL_WHITE || fg < 0) return; if (bg > WSCOL_WHITE || bg < 0) return; and the WSCOL_LIGHT_ colours are 8 higher than the non-LIGHT versions. So if rcons is in use, this explains it. (I'm not sure it is, but the symptoms match, and I don't, offhand, see anywhere else that could be responsible. But I'm not at all certain I haven't missed something.) Of course, the question now becomes _why_ that code is there. According to cvsweb, it appeared in rev 1.3, on 1999-04-13, without any indication what the purpose of it is; the commit message reads | Many enchancements to rcons to support ANSI color and all attributes | properly. All output now performed using a 'struct wsdisplay_emulops'. (There are numerous other messages talking about "ANSI color", but I _think_ it's actually ISO color; the SGR sequence is ANSI, but as I understand it the colour-specifying arguments for it come from ISO 6429, not ANSI. I've never found an authoritative source to say whether this is a misunderstanding or not....) /~\ The ASCII Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mo...@rodents-montreal.org / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B