Re: Flexible Console open (really little patch)

Richard Gooch (rgooch@atnf.csiro.au)
Wed, 19 Aug 1998 14:34:09 +1000

Alan Cox writes:
> > No - the idea is more to make it possible for the user to see all the
> > warning messages generated by the boot scripts - so he can turn the option
> > on. There is another point for allowing /etc/console: if the kernel opens
> > /etc/console instead of /dev/console it's possible to unmount /dev from
>
> The file is /dev/console. Having to hack the os to put bogus device nodes
> into /etc invalidates all the devfs arguments for having devfs to support
> devices on media that dont support dev files. If devfs needs this then
> devfs is broken or fix /sbin/init to open your /dev/ files for you

I think it's a non-issue. You don't even need to hack /sbin/init if
you don't want:

#! /bin/sh
# Put this in /sbin/init
# mount -t devfs none /dev
# rm /dev/console
# ln -s /etc/console /dev/console
# exec /sbin/init.real

Or get sysvinit which doesn't keep /dev/console open. We don't want to
put open ("/etc/console", ...) into the kernel. IMHO it's ugly enough
that we have open ("/dev/console", ...) in the first place.
The init kernel thread shouldn't whinge if /dev/console is missing.

Regards,

Richard....

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