Re: "Re: [PATCH 0/2] Colored kernel output (run2)" + "`Subject:' usage"

Willy Tarreau
2007-10-08T03:25:19Z

On Sun, Oct 07, 2007 at 09:47:25PM +0200, Oleg Verych wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 07, 2007 at 09:13:09PM +0200, Willy Tarreau wrote:
> > On Sun, Oct 07, 2007 at 08:47:52PM +0200, Rene Herman wrote:
> > > On 10/07/2007 06:12 PM, Ingo Molnar wrote:
> > >
> > > >* Oleg Verych <olecom@flower.upol.cz> wrote:
> > >
> > > >>Coloring isn't useful. If it was, it would be implemented ~16 years
> > > >>ago.
> > > >
> > > >Congratulations, this is the most stupid argument i've ever read on
> > > >lkml.
> []
> > I would say that while I'm not particularly fond of flashy colors
> > everywhere, I think that being able to use colors to indicate particular
> > actions in progress or conditions can be a good thing. RAID errors,
> > devices disabled due to command-line parameters, and general anomalies
> > which can cause a hang or panic a few line laters are worth coloring.
>
> That *is* the coloring, i'm talking about.
>
> > And I don't believe in userland's help here, because for that type of
> > messages, the indication should be returned immediately.
>
> In the very buggy cases, i think, everything just hang. Otherwise
> initramfs stuff can deal with it.
>
> > For instance, anyone who has experienced read errors on and IDE disk
> > knows that it can literally take hours/days to boot, after displaying
> > thousands of messages. Here, having the ability to see that no IRQ was
> > assigned or something like this could help.
>
> As i'm pretty much in all that text(tty)-mode stuff anyway, maybe after
> some time i will propose something klibc/tty based. Mainly a bit of user
> interface: split scrolling regions for errors and notifications; flexible
> color schemas (keyword highlighting); keyboard events. Of course it will
> work in such IDE cases, only if driver is a module.

But what I cannot understand is how you expect userspace to work while
the lines are being displayed. If this is just to repaint the screen
once everything is up, it is 100% useless. I'm interested in seeing
errors _while_ they are happening. Basically, I need no color if the
machine boots correctly.

Willy