Technical data

SunOS 5.5 Ioctl Requests fbio(7I)
NAME fbio − frame buffer control operations
DESCRIPTION The frame buffers provided with this release support the same general interface that is
defined by <sys/fbio.h>. Each responds to an FBIOGTYPE ioctl(2) request which returns
information in a fbtype structure.
Each device has anFBTYPE which is used by higher-level software to determine how to
perform graphics functions. Each device is used by opening it, doing an FBIOGTYPE
ioctl() to see which frame buffer type is present, and thereby selecting the appropriate
device-management routines.
FBIOGINFO returns information specific to the GS accelerator.
FBIOSVIDEO and FBIOGVIDEO are general-purpose ioctl() requests for controlling pos-
sible video features of frame buffers. These ioctl() requests either set or return the value
of a flags integer. At this point, only theFBVIDEO_ON option is available, controlled by
FBIOSVIDEO. FBIOGVIDEO returns the current video state.
The FBIOSATTR andFBIOGATTR ioctl( ) requests allow access to special features of
newer frame buffers. They use the fbsattr and fbgattr structures.
Some color frame buffers support the FBIOPUTCMAP and FBIOGETCMAP ioctl()
requests, which provide access to the colormap. They use the fbcmap structure.
Also, some framebuffers with multiple colormaps will either encode the colormap
identifier in the high-order bits of the "index" field in the fbcmap structure, or use the
FBIOPUTCMAPI and FBIOGETCMAPI ioctl( ) requests.
FBIOVERTICAL is used to wait for the start of the next vertical retrace period.
FBIOVRTOFFSET Returns the offset to a read-only vertical retrace page for those frame-
buffers that support it. This vertical retrace page may be mapped into user space with
mmap(2). The first word of the vertical retrace page (type unsigned int) is a counter that
is incremented every time there is a vertical retrace. The user process can use this
counter in a variety of ways.
FBIOMONINFO returns a mon_info structure which contains information about the mon-
itor attached to the framebuffer, if available.
FBIOSCURSOR, FBIOGCURSOR, FBIOSCURPOS and FBIOGCURPOS are used to control
the hardware cursor for those framebuffers that have this feature. FBIOGCURMAX
returns the maximum sized cursor supported by the framebuffer. Attempts to create a
cursor larger than this will fail.
FinallyFBIOSDEVINFO and FBIOGDEVINFO are used to transfer variable-length, device-
specific information into and out of framebuffers.
modified 27 Mar 1992 7I-109