# Portrait Mode



## iblue (Apr 24, 2012)

I am not quite sure if this belongs to the System Hardware or the Peripheral Hardware section. But I think more of the hardware (by weight) this post is about is outside of the case. So I put it in the Peripheral Hardware section. So, this is the hardware I am talking about:





I would like to install FreeBSD on this machine, currently I am running gentoo. As you can see, my 4 panels are in portrait mode. This works great with recent radeon drivers on x.org, so I think this will work with FreeBSD, too?

I am also using full disk encryption (which will be GELI in FreeBSD) and I need to input a password at boot. In Linux, there is a framebuffer driver for the radeon cards. It allows to use the screens in full resolution, while X11 is not started. It even rotates the screen. I searched the internet for a FreeBSD solution, but there did not seem to be something like this in FreeBSD. Can I rotate the console in FreeBSD somehow?


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## adamk (Apr 24, 2012)

The framebuffer you are using in Linux is driven by kernel modesetting present in the radeon DRM driver.  This is not available on FreeBSD.  You can get some basic framebuffer support, but rotation is not available.

In addition, you mention radeon cards, suggesting you are using more than one card.  You will not have any acceleration (2D or 3D) with multiple radeon cards in FreeBSD till KMS is available, assuming that ever actually happens.  Rotation *may* work but, even if it does, it will be horribly slow as all transformations will be done in software.

In short, you can't do what you want with that hardware in FreeBSD.

Adam


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## wblock@ (Apr 24, 2012)

If your Radeon cards are 4000-series or earlier, X is the same.  Newer cards are not yet supported.  Come to think of it, multiple cards might be a problem too.

As far as a rotated graphics console, not that I'm aware.  VESA 1024x768 with a custom font and modifications to the console code could do it.  But it's not going to echo the password anyway.  Maybe just a rotated splash(4) screen?


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## adamk (Apr 24, 2012)

wblock@ said:
			
		

> If your Radeon cards are 4000-series or earlier, X is the same.



This really is not true any more.  The radeon driver is significantly less buggy (EDIT: And more featureful) on Linux due to KMS, for nearly all r300 and higher radeon GPUs.


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## hishnik (Sep 11, 2012)

*Just need this thing too.*

Hello.
 I also need portrait mode for my console. Now I'm using jfbterm for ru_RU.UTF-8 support, but it doesn't supports vertical orientation %( More of all fbterm - supports portrait mode, but just on linux...
 Maybe it's not so difficult to do this with framebuffer? Some time ago I saw a post with a patch for jfbterm rotation for the sharp zaurus, but it was in Japanese language.  Can somebody find this code? I had no success with this: The Page 
 Thank YOU.


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