Re: [PATCH 1/8] SGI x86_64 UV: Add limit console output function

[Frederic Weisbecker <fweisbec@gmail.com>]

On Fri, Oct 23, 2009 at 06:37:44PM -0500, Mike Travis wrote:
> With a large number of processors in a system there is an excessive amount
> of messages sent to the system console.  It's estimated that with 4096
> processors in a system, and the console baudrate set to 56K, the startup
> messages will take about 84 minutes to clear the serial port.
> 
> This patch adds (for SGI UV only) a kernel start option "limit_console_
> output" (or 'lco' for short), which when set provides the ability to
> temporarily reduce the console loglevel during system startup.  This allows
> informative messages to still be seen on the console without producing
> excessive amounts of repetious messages.
> 
> Note that all the messages are still available in the kernel log buffer.



Well, this problem does not only concerns SGI UV but all boxes with a large
number of cpus.

Also, instead of adding the same conditionals in multiple places to solve
the same problem (and that may even expand if we go further the SGI UV case,
for example with other archs cpu up/down events), may be can you centralize,
institutionalize this issue by using the existing printk mechanisms.

I mean, may be that could be addressed by adding a new printk
level flag, and then associate the desired filters against it.

KERN_CPU could be a name, since this is targetting cpu events.