On Tue, Nov 19, 2002 at 11:32:45AM -0200, Rik van Riel wrote:
> On 19 Nov 2002, Andi Kleen wrote:
> > Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> writes:
>
> > > This was discussed on the kernel list about four to six weeks ago and
> > > rejected then as well. See the previous discussion
> >
> > Actually I don't remember it being rejected, just the discussion dropped
> > off and there was no suggestion on how to solve the problem this ioctl
> > solves in a better way.
>
> So, what problem does it try to solve ?
The output of all the startup scripts is logged by a special daemon to
a log file (blogd). It does this by redirecting /dev/console.
For it to be able to still output something to the screen and later
resetting the console it needs to know the output device that
/dev/console maps to. The ioctl returns it.
There is actually a fallback path that tries to discover the underlying
device when the ioctl is not there, but it is far too ugly to describe
and also has some problems.
-Andi
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