DRM_Log is an effort that continues to be worked on by Jocelyn Falempe at Red Hat as a new boot logger for printing the kernel messages on the screen.

DRM_Log uses the DRM client API to nicely print the kernel messages log on the screen at boot time. But by design it's not intended to replace FBCON as it's only displaying messages with no plans of handling user input or other functionality that is "better done in userspace", per Falempe.

DRM_Log is designed to work with all Direct Rendering Manager drivers, doesn't scroll the kernel messages by design, and uses the non-blocking console API so it's friendly with real-time "PREEMPT_RT" kernel builds. DRM_Log is only intended for boot messages until the user-space is ready to take over the display job.

Another nice feature of DRM_Log is integer scaling support to be able to increase the text size sufficiently for modern HiDPI displays. With the likes of "drm_log.scale=2" as a boot option is a means of increasing the integer scaling factor for kernel messages.

Those interested in this DRM_Log work can see the new [1]v4 patches out for review.



[1] https://lore.kernel.org/dri-devel/20241011105526.615812-1-jfalempe@redhat.com/