Date: Wed, 2 Sep 2009 21:14:32 -0400 From: Justin Hibbits <jrh29@alumni.cwru.edu> To: James Butler <sweetnavelorange@gmail.com> Cc: FreeBSD CURRENT Mailing List <freebsd-current@freebsd.org>, Nick Hibma <nick@van-laarhoven.org>, Robert Noland <rnoland@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: Reducing noise in dmesg output Message-ID: <fd9cd3450909021814i41dec476v42c8f23b1d5684e@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <f0dd9eb90909021739o4d31c88l5be6638f7998dae6@mail.gmail.com> References: <200909010931.16880.nick@van-laarhoven.org> <1251841416.1689.4458.camel@balrog.2hip.net> <200909021656.15747.nick@van-laarhoven.org> <f0dd9eb90909021739o4d31c88l5be6638f7998dae6@mail.gmail.com>
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On Wed, Sep 2, 2009 at 8:39 PM, James Butler <sweetnavelorange@gmail.com>wrote:
> 2009/9/3 Nick Hibma <nick@van-laarhoven.org>:
> >> What is irrelevant is subjective... I mean does the average user really
> >> need to see anything in dmesg? Please don't change agp_i810.c. A
> >> verbose boot is incredibly noisy and rarely needed for debugging
> >> anything except the most deep rooted of issues.
> >
> > Please state arguments instead of this 'I think it is useful'. That's not
> > going to cut it. If you feel strongly about the info that is being
> produced,
> > an option would be to produce a (tested!) patch that combines more
> > information on one line as a compromise.
> >
> > FreeBSD has historically been producing very limited output on dmesg.
> Linux
> > is very noisy (ever noticed the copyright notices right in the middle of
> > your list of PCI devices?). Even they have decided that they should hide
> > this behind coloured 'ok/failed' texts in some distributions.
>
> This seems like an important distinction - the information which needs
> to be available with dmesg and the information best shown to the user
> at startup are not necessarily the same. The hypothetical "average
> user" probably wouldn't care if there were *no* kernel messages shown
> on startup. The Xubuntu box I'm writing this from shows only GRUB
> messages before the login prompt on tty1, and only service startup
> messages on tty8 (not to suggest that FreeBSD ought to be more like
> Ubuntu...).
>
> IOW, why bother painting it at all? Plain galvanized steel is very
> durable, and quite attractive when kept clean ;-)
>
> -James Butler
>
Doesn't the 'boot_mute' (loader) environment variable do just that?
>From the man page:
boot_mute
All console output is suppressed when console is muted. In a
running system, the state of console muting can be
manipulated
by the conscontrol(8) utility.
- Justin
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