Virtcon

Virtcon is the system terminal. It is a critical part of bringup and provides graphical output with minimal hardware requrements.

Design

Virtcon is written in Rust and powered by Carnelian. Carnelian enables advanced vector graphics and truetype text rendering while maintaining minimal hardware requirements.

Goals

• Minimal resource usage.
• Maximize code reuse with Terminal app.
• Boot animation for startup and shutdown.
• Runtime product configuration.
• Flicker free single framebuffer mode.

Usage

System reboot

Devices with keyboards may issue a system reboot request by pressing the Ctrl + Alt + Delete key combination.

Alternatively, devices with a power button may reboot the system by pressing the power button repeatedly. To trigger a reboot, the power button must be pressed 3 times in a row, with no more than 2 seconds between presses.

The type of reboot depends on the duration of the third button press:

• To reboot the system, the third press must be a short press (1 second or less).

• To reboot to the bootloader, the third press must be a long press (more than 1 second).

Roadmap

1. Boot animation chime support.
2. Silent boot system for runtime suppression of chime.

Testing

Configure

fx set core.x64 --with //src/bringup/bin/virtcon:tests

Then test

fx test virtual_console_tests