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Date:      Sun, 28 May 2006 16:21:13 +1000
From:      Peter Jeremy <peterjeremy@optushome.com.au>
To:        Julian Elischer <julian@elischer.org>
Cc:        arch@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: A sort of plan for consoles in FreeBSD
Message-ID:  <20060528062113.GN744@turion.vk2pj.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <44793146.6070200@elischer.org>
References:  <16029.1148764704@critter.freebsd.dk> <44793146.6070200@elischer.org>

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On Sat, 2006-May-27 22:12:38 -0700, Julian Elischer wrote:
>Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:
>>We have four concepts of "console" in FreeBSD:
>>
>>1. Whatever boot0/boot1/boot2/loader uses
>>    Accessed from/via native boot/firmware environment
>
>#1 is sort of independent as it stops being used at the moment FreeBSd 
>starts.

Last time I checked, the copyright notice and some of the early kernel
probe output came via the native firmware (at least on some
architectures).  There's a bit of a Catch-22 because the kernel wants
to report output before it's got far enough through the device probe
sequence to be able to talk to the hardware making up the console.

>>4. The /dev/console device in multi-user mode.
>>    Emergency output device for critical messages.
>
>but, emergency messages from where? You've coverred the ones I care about 
>above.

syslog(3) LOG_CONS immediately comes to mind.  A quick check of the
source shows that ps(1), init(8), rpc.ypxfrd(8), bits of the lp
subsystem as well as thread library's initialisation code can also
write to /dev/console.

I thought dump(8) did but it doesn't appear to any longer.

-- 
Peter Jeremy



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