Re: Boot messages (Was: Re: Ideas for v2.1)

Jon Tombs (jon@gte.esi.us.es)
Tue, 11 Jun 1996 16:56:32 +0100 (BST)

Cees de Groot said:
>
>
> tiensivu@pilot.msu.edu said:
> > o Making the below messages optional. These are nice for
> > distribution packages, but most people don't change their hardware
> > that often to make it worthwhile each time you boot-up.
>
> > This processor honours the WP bit even when in supervisor mode. Good.
> > Checking 386/387 coupling... Ok, fpu using exception 16 error
> > reporting. Checking 'hlt' instruction... Ok.
>
> IMO that's the only thing left that SCO does better: it just builds a small
> table on your monitor telling you that it detected your hardware and where it
> resides, and nothing else. I vote for suppressing _all_ this mess unless
> somebody boots with the ``verbose'' option. Something like:
>
> bootmsg=silent - Say nothing
> bootmsg=default - Show a summary
> bootmsg=verbose - Show what it shows now

Why bloat the kernel with three levels, just add a kernel options quiet, by
default it should still be verbose (at least in new installs), or you would
never know when the kernel has hung checking the halt instruction or probing a
sound blaster cdrom where your ethernet card is (the sbpcd driver is one that
drastically needs shutting up, it shouldn't probe unless told too and should
spend upto 15 minutes telling you about it...).

> Summary could look like:
>
> Proc 1: 486 (GENUINE INTEL)
> Memory: 24Mb mem, 23200k left, 256k cache
> PCI bus: <chipset info>
> Video: S3 <hardware info>
> SCSI: NCR <hardware info>
> bus 0 id 1 lun 0: CD-ROM Toshiba (scd0)
> bus 0 id 3 lun 0: DISK Seagate (sda)
> bus 0 id 5 lun 0: DISK Quantum (sdb)
> bus 0 id 6 lun 0: TAPE WangDAT (st0)
>
> or something more tabular. All in all one line per hardware item detected,
> nothing more (and nothing less - I'd like to know that everything is still
> alive).

Put that in your rc.local, all the above information you can get from /proc,
and you can use ncurses or similar and print the information in color if you
like.

-- 
Jon. <jon@gte.esi.us.es, http://www.esi.us.es/~jon>