Re: Bootscreen

Horst von Brand
2003-01-29T09:05:08Z

Roy Sigurd Karlsbakk <roy@karlsbakk.net> said:

[...]

> 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. And this is a very specialized application, where the vendor will
install a heavily hacked system anyway, as they won't have standard VGA or
keyboard or...

It has no relevance whatsoever to the standard, for-your-typical-box
kernel.
--
Dr. Horst H. von Brand User #22616 counter.li.org
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