Re: [PATCH] kernel/printk: do not turn off bootconsole in printk_late_init if keep_bootcon

[Nishanth Aravamudan <nacc@us.ibm.com>]

Hi Andrew,

On 19.08.2011 [17:10:24 -0700], Andrew Morton wrote:
> On Tue,  9 Aug 2011 17:02:33 -0700
> Nishanth Aravamudan <nacc@us.ibm.com> wrote:
> 
> > It seems that commit 7bf693951a8e5f7e600a45b74d91d962a453146e doesn't
> > always achieve what it aims, as printk_late_init() runs it
> > unconditionally turns off all boot consoles. With this patch, I am able
> > to see more messages on the boot console in KVM guests than I can
> > without, when keep_bootcon is specified.
> > 
> > Signed-off-by: Nishanth Aravamudan <nacc@us.ibm.com>
> > Cc: David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
> > Cc: Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>
> > Cc: Greg KH <gregkh@suse.de>
> 
> The patch is applicable to 2.6.39.x and to 3.0.x but I'm unable to work
> out if the end-user impact is sufficiently serious to warrant
> backporting the fix into those kernels.
> 
> Please let us know you opinion on this.

Sorry for the delay in responding. I think it is appropriate for the
relevant -stable trees. However, it's more of an annoyance than a
serious bug (ideally you don't need to keep the boot console around as
console handover should be working -- I was encountering a situation
where the console handover wasn't working and not having the boot
console available meant I couldn't see why).

Thanks,
Nish

-- 
Nishanth Aravamudan <nacc@us.ibm.com>
IBM Linux Technology Center