Re: Bootscreen

H. Peter Anvin
2003-01-28T18:37:03Z

Followup to: <200301281515.15611.roy@karlsbakk.net>
By author: Roy Sigurd Karlsbakk <roy@karlsbakk.net>
In newsgroup: linux.dev.kernel
>
> You'll never send an engineer out to replace a set-top-box. You'll just wait
> for the customer to return the box and send out a new one. Software doesn't
> fail on those - it's some 99.9% hardware failure. If you get a hang or panic
> or something, the boxes usually have watchdogs to take care of that (and then
> reboot automatically). The average computer-frightened user getting an STB
> from the VoD/IPTV company (or her ISP) don't want to see any kernel
> gibberish. They just want a nice splash screen telling them "everything's
> gonna be alright in 45 seconds" or something. Trouble shooting is
> done in the lab after the box is returned
>

Right, which is why those boxes when running Linux invariably direct
their kernel messages to a debugging port of some sort (usually a
serial port.)

-hpa
--
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